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Why It Is Vital To Prune Grapes
If you're growing wine grapes, pruning grapes is a necessary task. It doesn't matter whether you own a vineyard or your own little backyard vine. The finest grapes are those that come from vines that are carefully pruned. Just like all plants, they need careful pest control and weeding too. Often the vines have to receive diligent attention for three years before producing fine grapes.
Pruning grapes is the method of removing unwanted vine growth and encouraging desirable vine growth so that the grape vines will use their nutrients to produce the strongest possible growth patterns with the finest possible grapes. Pruning grapes guarantees that the your vines will shape in the proper pattern in a sturdy, insect and weather resistant form.
It can take years before pruning pays off. However, pruning isn't the only training your grapevines need. You too need a trellis for your vines to follow to gain the proper pattern. Ensure that each plant is just one healthy shoot, tied to the trellis. You should clip off any other shoots.
Sooner or later, maybe after a time of little growth, your main shoot should have a couple shoots come out of it. You will want to tie these horizontally along the trellis, as they will develop into the main branches to hold your grape clusters. During each and every time of slowed growth, you have to be pruning grapes to make sure they grow in the desired directions. This pruning during slowed growth time periods must proceed endlessly.
To some degree, pruning grapes should be done according to the type of grapes you grow. For instance, some tougher new hybrids have been produced to withstand disease and cold weather. They need little pruning because they don't tend to have extra growths to prune during slowed growth periods. Pruning grapes like this is merely a matter of getting rid of spurs and also fruiting canes from the past harvest. The grapes simply grow a new cane for every grape cluster during each growing period.
Pruning grapes can be a fragile process. If you prune too much, your vine may turn out additional leaf shoots, which will in turn will give too much shade for your grapes to appropriately ripen. If you prune too little, your grapes might not grow in desired patterns or on strong enough grapevines.
The equipment of the skilled grapevine pruner are handsaws, hand pruners, and loppers. Each must be used carefully to cut away excess growth, without inflicting any sort of damage to the plant. For this reason, hand pruners should not be used on shoots of over a year old. Loppers and handsaws can give a much cleaner cut on larger shoots, which is essential for disease resistance and insect resistance.
Growing fine grapes begins with hard work to grow good grapevines. This work should continue for the duration of your grapevines. Luckily, pruning grapes is one of the less complicated parts of this process. It is just simply a matter of learning how to do correct pruning and spending time to do the pruning each year. The results will be great grapes.
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