Pruning Gape Vines

It may seem like hard work under the heat of the sun but pruning grape vines is a must-do activity to maintain the health of the entire plant. As you learn how to grow grapes, make sure to give particular importance to learning this important skill. Think of pruning as training the vines so that the proper size and shape are maintained, thus, leading to higher crop quality and quantity. Otherwise, the farmer will have poor quality fruit because of the overabundance of foliage in the vines.

Training System

Keep in mind that once the vineyard is established in the land, it will continue to bear fruit for the next 40 years. But to make this possible, the farmer has to choose the training system to be used in the vineyard in the first two years. The choice is affected by factors like cultivars, climate and arbor system in place, among others.

Obviously the training system refers to the methods by which the farmer and his assistants go about pruning grape vines. There are many choices in this regard including:

• High cordon systems involve carefully training the young vines to one or two trunks. Then, the fruiting area can then be established in many directions like head-trained, permanent cordons and fan shapes. This training system is relatively simple from establishment to maintenance and, thus, is favored by many gardeners and farmers of the vine.
• Cane-trained systems involve laying down new canes with each growing season. The canes are tied and the buds are adjusted depending on the desired berry load.
  

Varietal Differences

As previously mentioned, the choice of method for pruning grape vines also depends on the cultivars. Thus, the grape varieties of American, French-American hybrid, and Vinifera are pruned in different manners at different times. In fact, these varieties are grown by gardeners and farmers in different conditions since each one requires a certain level of skill in growing grapes.

Also, since these cultivars bear different fruit loads, pruning is also different. For example, the American variety tends to produce the greater quantity of vegetative growth in comparison with the French-American hybrid, which means that the former will require more pruning. The Vinifera varieties require the least amount of pruning because these have the least quantity of foliage.

Farmers also use the 30+10+10 balanced pruning system. This method of pruning grape vines is used to determine the quantity of buds to be retained on the vine with the weight of the one-year-old wood cut off as the basis. In all these pruning activities, the general rule is that the grapevines tend to over-compensate through increased foliage when there is an absence of sufficient fruit load in which the leaf-produced carbohydrates can be stored. So, always leave the right number of clusters on the vine so that excess foliage can be avoided.

Furthermore, it must be noted that even the best technique of pruning grape vines will be useless when the right hand tools are missing. Loppers, handsaws and hand pruners are tools of the trade, which are designed to ensure that the wood can be cleanly cut off. Thus, unnecessary injury to the vine can be avoided.