How you approach grape vine pruning depends upon the individual condition of the grape vine and what you want your grape vine to look like. There are different approaches for pruning of new vines, established vines and old, seriously neglected and overgrown vines. It also depends on how you want the vine to look, and what support system the vine has to grow upon.
It is horses for courses and a vineyard approach used on a single vine in a small backyard would look as ridiculous as a well constructed but surreal trellis halfway down a pristine vineyard line. Watch this space though because someone will eventually send me an amazing picture of both. Creative plant growth can be very forgiving and beauty doesn’t always adhere to the rules.
Using the gym analogy from the earlier article, while the underlying fitness principles are similar for a swimmer and long distance runner, lots of training, particular skills development, careful attention to nutrition, and controlled muscle development, the particular regimes are, once again, horses for courses. The structural pruning for a trellis, espalier, and vineyard line will obviously differ. Once the structural pruning has been addresses however, the principles of pruning for fruit will be the same.
When planting new grape vines, while the vast majority are planted in vineyards and trained accordingly, grape vines in a garden environment can combine beauty with the fruiting function. With new vines in a yard setting you are limited only by your imagination – subject of course to meeting the basic soil, sunlight and nutrient needs of the plant. There is no difference in a vineyard vine and a trellis vine in terms of its potential to fruit. In general however, the trellis and espalier vines do not get the same attention to fruiting given to vineyard lines. This comes back more to the context of the garden than to the productive capacity of the plant.
Vines can be trained around all sorts of structures and objects. The backyard trellis for example, can be designed, located, built and then implemented as a grape vine support, to create a magnificent visual display with a succulent and bountiful harvest. A sunny wall could house an espaliered grapevine that shades in summer and then allows the winter heat. For more information please visit my site
Patio Projects
Established vines, for example, an existing vine in a recently purchased property, were usually done by the former property owner who may, or may not have appreciated the finer points of grape vine pruning. Grape vine pruning is easy, but it is also very specific and most backyard grape growers do not know the specifics. One of the reasons for this is that back yard growers tend to focus on annual crops like tomatoes, cucumbers, and zucchini. These are annuals and the produce happens on first year growth. There is no fruit on first year’s growth in a grape vine. So, very often the successful backyard vegetable gardener unwittingly applies annual pruning techniques that actually inhibit the grape harvest. The key is to understand that fruiting only occurs on one-year-old canes. So if you prune out the one year old canes and go back to old growth, you will get a very small grape harvest, if any.
Once a grape vine has taken root, so to speak, it can live, and grow for hundreds of years. If you inherited a very old, overgrown and neglected grape vine then you pruning techniques will be different. First of all you will need to remove dead growth so you can get some idea of the underlying growth structure and the potential for beauty and function. I have seen a property where a magnificent and very old vine was ripped out simply because the developers, builders and the owners did not have the foresight or motivation to creatively interpret and incorporate the existing vine into their development plans. The sad irony was that the new owners ended up planting a new grape vine in the almost the exact same spot. What a travesty and waste.
Once the deadwood has been removed, and this project should not be done in a single day, watch the vine and let it communicate to you. Look for the form the supporting structure is trying to express and then do a structural prune. During this phase be careful to preserve first year growth canes because only these will fruit.
The great gardeners became great because they are able to tune into the spirit the garden is trying to express. They walk around, muse and imagine and let the ideas come from the garden itself. Gardens are living, organic processes, not rubber stamps. Let the life, the organics and the process unfold so that the old grapevine finds new life within its old surroundings. During the final stage of structural pruning pay attention to the careful selection of the first year canes you want for fruiting. Within the structural context, trim the excess first year canes to reduce competition and promote stronger fruit. For more information please visit my site
Patio Projects
