Pruning Grape Vines to Get the Most Fruit
Posted: Thursday, August 19, 2010
by Nate Buchanan
Proper training of your grapevines is important to maintain plant size, shape, and productivity. It maintains the natural equilibrium. It helps keep the vine from growing out of control. Pruning is the method used for keeping a vine in balance. It allows you to have a good regular crop of the best quality grapes you can have year after year after year. Just like any other plants, if left unattended, grapevines can become unruly, and fruiting will be poor due to over production of vegetation. Also, your fruit will not properly ripen, and over production of the vine can lead to premature death. Proper pruning is essential for better growth and the production of your grapevines.
When the vines are mature, pruning can involve dealing with a considerable amount of vegetation. If your grapevine is ready for pruning you have to select the strongest and most healthy looking stem during the winter of the first year. Using bypass pruners, remove all the other stems at the base of the plant or as close to the trunk on the main stem as possible. Then you have to stake the remaining stem which will become the trunk of the plant. Use a grape stake or you can secure the vine along a fence with wire. Allow the stems to grow from the main trunk.
In the spring of the second year, it's time to begin removing all but two of the very best side shoots that grow from the trunk. If the vine is not branching out where you want it too, try to pinch the top of the main trunk to encourage side branching. Cut back the top of the trunk during midsummer of the second year, this should be when your vine reaches the desired hieght. This process will force new growth along the main trunk.
If you don't like the new branch you have to remove it. Then, Cut back all but the desired side branches and the main trunk during the second winter. You must allow the vine to grow during the third spring and summer, removing anything that grows from the trunk. Leave 12 buds along each of the arms during the third winter. Remember that pruning during the third winter is crucial to future fruit production. These 12 are the buds that will produce fruit during the 4th summer. Each of the 12 should have 1-2 leaf joints so that the vine looks like a stubby hat rack when you are finished pruning. These are called 'renewal buds' and will remain on the plant forever. Prune the 12 renewal buds so that there is always one more bud growing from the tip. This practice will continue from the fourth winter onward. What you are doing is allowing the renewal buds to extend and grow one bud length every season. During the summer, the fruit develops on the new growth that springs from the renewal bud. Keeping them short during the dormant season keeps the plants under control.
No matter what your reason is for grapes, it is vital for you to learn pruning techniques to keep the vine balanced and to have a good harvest.
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