2nd season grapevine advice

Here are some pics to show what I mean. I'm pretty sure they are the young bunches as of today. To leave or not to leave.... that is the question.

Hi SMT. I am in a similar situation, also growing grapevines in their second season - I have a thread below which might be of interest to you showing progress of my vines. In response to your questions, my thoughts are:

1. I would leave these on. These are not immature grapes as such, but young flowers which will (or should) eventually grow into a bunch of grapes. If you were to cut them all off then you would have no flowers and so no grapes! I also have a bunch of flowers showing in each of my vines growing shoots, and I will be leaving these on at the moment.

2. I was reading a book the other day that suggested in the 2nd and 3rd year you should allow no more than 3 bunches of grapes to grow per vine. I think it depends how mature your vine is - although mine are only in their second season here, I bought them pot grown rather than just cuttings, so they are fairly strong. My vines are pot grown, and on my strongest vine I plan to allow no more than 6 bunches to grow - I would suggest the less you grow in the second year the better, in order to allow the vine to focus energy on establishing itself.

Hope that's some help, maybe someone with more experience with grape growing can give you some better advice

Thanks for the info Grapegrower. Forgot about the flowering process, lol.

Your advice makes sense. I have well over 6 flowers forming on the vine already!

I just checked ours and we have loads of those too.. maybe we'll get grapes this year