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This is the second season for my grapevine and it has sent out lots of shoots with the beginnings of flowers. I've tied the shoots in to try and train it, but don't know if I should take some of the flowers off in order to encourage fewer bunches of bigger grapes, or just leave it to sort itself out?
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I thin my grapes to one bunch per foot roughly. When the grapes form don't forget to thin the grapes in the bunches or there is not enough for the ones in the middle to expand and you end up with square squashed grapes. I never actually manage to remove enough, I never realise how much they will grow, -
It depends whether you are growing your grapes as dessert grapes for eating or for making wine or grape juice. If the latter, then I would be tempted to just leave the vine to its own devices except for cutting back all the new vegetative, non-flowering shoots, which will just sap the production of fruit. If it is for dessert grapes, then do what Greenishfing suggests.
The main problem with vines is that they make rampant growth, especially in fertile moist soil. You will need to keep it pruned back through most of the season and just allow a few buds of the new growth to remain to produce next year's fruiting cane. Otherwise your vine will turn into a mass of foliage which will not be productive at all.
Follow the single or double guyot method.Comment
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Thanks both. Last year it produced lots of bunches of tiny grapes, which were delicious but diddly. I think we will just eat them so I will take off the foliage canes without flower and then thin out and thin out bunches - fingers crossed!
Will research guyot methods - sounds interesting.
Thanks againComment
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Stop the fruiting shoots two leaves beyond the bunch.Gardening requires a lot of water - most of it in the form of perspiration. Lou Erickson, critic and poetComment
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