Grow Your Own Magazine

hi all , 1st post ,be gentle

ive a vine outside (3 years this year)

its growing up a trellis then onto a grid ,its now about 6 feet tall ( thats the main stem)
had loads of growth last year ,nice shade.

this year i pruned the main stem back to 5 buds,ive about 3feet of nice growth ,but as yet no flowers forming ??

im in central england,should i have something on this by now ??

thanks for any replies

( dont know the name of the vine )

thanks

Flowers appear on the first new growth in Spring/early Summer. When did you prune it? A vine should be pruned back hard if desired in the depth of Winter, most people seem to do this around Jan/Feb time, well before any signs of the buds swelling. If this is what you did and there are no flowers by now, I don;t think you will get any this late in the day I'm afraid.

Mark

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I've inherited a large grapevine when we moved house and it's now way past the flower stage and well onto forming the grapes so if you've no flowers yet, I imagine you won't get any this year.

hi ,it was pruned in the dead of winter ,very hard

i have 3 vines in 4,3,3, years old

none have produced any flowers ,confused

ive apples,peaches,blueberrys,kiwi, and banana plants ,all doing well

just cannot get these to produce ????

Perhaps you've pruned it back a little too hard. Vines will happily take hard pruning, but the flowering/fruiting comes from the buds of the previous year's growth.

How I do it is to cut back all the Summer growth except for two good size vines, which are then pruned back to around 10 buds each (this is known as Double Guyot training). It's these 20 buds from the previous Summer's growth which contain the embryonic fruit for this year. In the Spring they will break and put out growth, the early part of which will have the flowers, and hence the grapes.

If you pruned back to the permanent stock, you may have removed all the potentail fruiting buds from the previous Summers growth, and therefore no flowers. This Winter, hard prune, but don't remove all this year's growth.

Hope this help, Mark

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i think i may have done that

i pruned the vine back to the main stem /Permanent stock ??

the stock gows vertical to about 6feet then bends at 90 degrees about 4 feet .I cut all the previous growth back to the horizontal length


thanks for all replies


ill buy some grapes from local store and tie them on lol

I keep reading grapevine advice but I'm too fick to understand it all properly. Ours is about 12 ft and very leafy, but can't see any fruit appearing at all. Must have pruned rubbishly last year. Oh well! We'll be eating dolmades all summer anyway so not a total washout I guess!

p.s. last years grapes were wonderful - muscat-y and very sweet. Have never tasted any in shops that were as nice! Ok, we only got two bunches, but they were nice...

It took about 3 or 4 years before I got any fruit on our grapevine, I think it's 'Brandt' but not sure. I just cut it back in winter to around about a bud after where the fruit formed on each stem & it grows like wildfire in the spring. I'm now constantly cutting it back to two leaves past where the flowers have formed & cutting out completely any stems which have no flowers at all so that all the energy goes into feeding the fruit. It's worth cutting some of the bigger leaves off too when the fruit is forming so that the sun can get to them to ripen them.

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Our vines established very quickly, producing a tiny crop even in the first year, although it's probably always better to restrict fruiting in the first couple of years to help the vine establish a good root system and stock.

Pruning a vine hard in the Winter is a good thing since the more vine you leave unpruned, the more fruiting buds you'll have. This will lead to a heavy crop of small grapes which the vine may struggle to ripen properly. This is why the grapes from huge vines grown to give shade are often small and sour.

But next year's grapes develop from buds which form on this years growth, so if you remove all of this years growth at the end of the year, right down to the permanent stock, you won't get any grapes because the new growth will be vegetative not fruiting.

Another way of looking at it is if you look at this years growth, at the leaf points (axils) you will see a developing bud. The first pic shows one on a Regent grapevine at the moment. The second is during the Winter following the removal of all growth except two canes which have been bent down onto a wire. These buds in effect contain next years grapes. The job of pruning is to leave the vine with enough, but not too many, of these buds. This will determine the size of next years crop.



I'm hoping to get our first gallon of wine off these vines this year, if we can get them before the Blackbirds do...

Mark

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littlemark, that was so helpful, thanks!

Our grapevine is very big and unruly and I just pruned away last winter with no idea what I was doing! Fortunately, we still seem to have gazillions of grapes on there.

So, how do you determine how many is too many/enough buds? Would you say a certain number depending on the length/size of vine? I reckon the permanent stock on our vine is around about 6ft vertically then 15ft ish in either direction from there.

It really all depends on what you want from your vine. If your grapes are destined for wine the critical factor is sugar levels. If you visit a vineyard you will see that each vine is quite heavily restricted through pruning, the aim being to give a good crop of decent sized grapes which have a good chance of ripening. To make wine the sugar levels need to be at a maximum level, and this is generally acheived in this country with around 20 buds per vine after pruning.

If it's for eating, it's probably even more important to restrict the cropping, because not only will you not want to eat unripe grapes, but the size is more important for eating.

Other factors include grape variety and climate. You'll probably get away with a bigger crop per vine in Somerset, than in Yorkshire.

It's all about balancing yield against quality of grape. Only experience will tell you what's right. If you find your grapes are small and sour, try reducing the cropping potential through pruning.

Mark

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Littlemark, may I just say thank you for all the advice you have given here - You have made it very easy for a grapevine novice like me to understand and... watch out for the pictures next year

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