Grape care

Photo's a little hard to see clearly, but grapes are pretty flexible beasts when it comes to pruning - there are a ton of different ways to prune and trim.

From an ornamental point of view, you can just pinch the tips of green growth in the summer as needed to keep growth in check, and cut back to woodly growth in winter to roughly get the coverage that you want on the trellis. It will likely fruit, but not in the same quantity as more regular pruning.

The long standing grape systems tend to look to prune to an established frame work of either vertical or horizonal arms. A fan system tho is descriped here which would fit your trellis, but it's not a system that I've used myself:

G6090 Home Fruit Production: Grape Training Systems | University of Missouri Extension

Grape care?? erm, just be nice to us

Sounds reasonable.

I guess my question is the guyot system - where you only keep the wood from 1 year ago and then it fruits and you cut it away the next winter - if you dont do that, do the same bits of vine keep on fruiting?

Why does that system exist if is not neccessary? or is it to do with vigour and amoutn of grape production?

thanks

Morris

The Guyot system (which is the one I use) is particularly appropriate to winemaking, probably less so for dessert grapes.

The point of this kind of training, and the many other methods practiced in the vineyard, is to balance cropping against ripeness. If you let your grape go without significant pruning back in the Winter, you will get ever increasing crops of small grapes which will not ripen properly. By hard pruning in Winter you can determine the optimum size of crop which the vine can effectively ripen.

I use the Guyot system because it's the one I understand and it works well for me. I wrote a little more about it here: Rockingham Forest Cider: Grape Expectations

The crucial thing is to not cut away all the previous season's growth. If you do you'll get new growth from the permanent stock, but it will probably not produce any fruit. The embryonic fruiting buds occur at the leaf axils of the previous year's growth.

Mark

The aim of the Guyot system is primarily to have replacement "arms" each year, from which will grow the grape laterals - some grape varieties fruit better on replacement arms, than from spur training systems on which most systems are based.

It's pretty compact system tho, my double guyot dessert grapes grow to about 4 foot wide x 5 foot high with a foot of the height being the main stem.

Without pruning, different bits of the vine will fruit each year - it will be the new growth laterals that will form from the existing framework that will bear the fruit

Hi

So If i prune all this years growth, i get growth but no fruit next year.

But what if I keep the two main spurs, that have all the laterals on at the moment, permanently and in the winter prune all the laterls off, will I get more laterals and fruit next year? Or does that not work

That would save me having to replace my framework every year, but will i get grapes?

thanks

Morris

hi i have had a grape vine for 3 yr can anyone tell me why i get not grapes

Normally vines are not encouraged to fruit until the third year, the first couple of years being spent establishing a good framework, one main upright and three to four laterals each side, limit each lateral to 3-4 bunches or you will get lots of small grapes, some thinning of bunches may be required (with small scissors!!), make sure your vine runs up and down a south/southwest facing slope, although they enjoy water good drainage is vital, as seems to be quite poor soil!. What kind of grape do you have?, Black Hamburg does quite well in gardens, the commercial boys and girls use mainly Reichensteiner, Bacchus, Pinot Noir, Seyval and Muller Thurgau, with some Sauvignon Blanc and Chardonnay.

OK now the easy peasy way, allow the vine to reach between 10 and 20 feet depending on space, tying in to a fan shape as it grows, remove any shoots that are surplus( psst, you can make a decent white wine from the green shoots that you remove,"FollyWine").
As flower clusters form limit them to 16 - 20 per vine, removing clusters and shoots that form thereafter.
Ps, its almost worth letting the vine do its own thing and harvesting the shoots to make wine with, cos its so good most people will think you bought it!!, if you let it mature for a couple of months.