It's time - past time - to prune the grapes. We have two types: Concord grapes (great for juice, jam and fruit leather) and green seedless table grapes that are really sugar bombs masquerading as a healthy snack.
This is a grape plant in need of a haircut.
It's actually had a preliminary trimming; Mr. Caffeinated got out there and did the rough whack-it-back a month or so ago, so that I could actually get to the main vines. But there is still much to do if we're not going to have an uncontrollable grape jungle this summer.
THIS is old growth. See how it's a dark brown, and looks like it's a snake shedding its skin? New growth comes from this and fruits, but this part of the plant is where the new vines grow from, not the grapes themselves.
THIS is new growth. It's a lighter shade, less flaky, and has buds on it.
At each of those joints in the vine, there's a bud. This is where the grapes will be coming from.
HERE is where the new growth has sprouted from the main (old) vine.
I've been told that I prune my grapes as if they were wine grapes rather than juice grapes: for quality versus sheer quantity. Given that we have hundreds of pounds more than we can use every year - I am pretty sure we gave away nearly a ton last year, and I'm not exaggerating - I can afford to prune for quality!
I leave two buds to fruit on each new growth vine that I leave on the plant.
First bud:
Second bud:
... then cut.
Note that this doesn't leave a lot of vine. That's perfectly ok; a healthy grape plant will proceed to grow yards more vines over the spring and summer. If they aren't whacked back severely, they will take over and I'll never see the main vine again.
I also take off any vine that looks spindly or is heading in the wrong direction completely off at the main vine. Even if they're still alive - this one looks pretty dead, but was still green at the core - I really only want the healthiest, most robust vines to grow grapes, anyway.
This plant is pruned back pretty nicely. There's plenty of healthy vines with a couple of buds to produce grapes - and they're growing in all directions, since these are very old vines that haven't been trained to set all the new growth in the same direction.
Every year, even though we invite friends to come and pick as much as they want, there's still loads of grapes that go to waste. Last year, we certainly gave away more than 1000 pounds, but you can see that a lot of grapes fell on the ground and went to waste anyway.
So, if you're offered a chance to go pick grapes at a friend's house, and they say "take all you want; we're done picking" - don't be afraid to strip all the grapes you can see off the vines. These were gone over twice by different people, and you can see that plenty were missed!
Winter pruning helps keep the jungle under control, but there will still be lots of leaves and new growth on these grapes once summer arrives and they hit their stride. Grapes need a solid haircut every year, to keep them under control.
No comments:
Post a Comment