What happens if you don't prune grape vines?

Pruning grapes

Grapes can grow an impressive amount in just one year. It is important to aggressively remove the old growth to have grapes productive. This section shows you how to cut and provide instructions for problem areas.

Trim the grapes.

First of all, grapes are trimmed more widely and aggressively than anything else you can think of. Once you know how to do it properly, grapes become very productive. If you do not do enough, it grows into forests, and the plant will not be productive.

All you need to cut the vine is a pair of small hand pruners, if you haven't been aggressive over the years, you may need a couple of hand loppers. Normally there are two top with one to one direction and one to the other direction, and again, then there are two lower branches, with one to one direction and one to the opposite direction.

Grapes are usually grown about twelve feet apart. Therefore, each branch is about six feet long, then the plant from the next trunk will come in, so both branches are just touched. Everything else that expanded last year must be removed.

To select the four branches that we are leaving, you need to get a branch that is about as big as around your little finger. Choose one that is still alive. You can tell that just trying to bend. If it's flexible and bendable, it's alive.

We need to do pruning, sometimes in early spring, just before the eyes begin to swell. We're a little late this year because our eyes are growing. We like to do that when there's a little bit of growth developed. However, it will need enough wires so you can determine whether there is any dead growth. You have to be sure and cut out.

So all you have to do is measure six feet. Pretend that this branch is attached to the trunk. We measure about six feet from that and cut it out. Snap it out like that and then everything else in between comes off as well. So, all we're going to have is one foot out of the main trunk – about six feet long, and nothing else with it.

Grape crops will produce a large amount of growth during a single season. Here's an example of one josh growing last year, as you can see, it's probably at least twenty to twenty-five feet long, and the plant may have fifteen, twenty or thirty cans developed in a single season. The amount of wood needed to leave the plant is impressive when it stacks up.

The disadvantage of not enough pruning is that the plant produces a lot of leaves that become shaded. The ability of plants to set the fruit buds for the next year. So you have a lot of leaf growth, then it becomes wild.

This is a grape crop that has been properly trimmed. This is the main trunk and we have four branches out in each direction. There are two at the top - one out here and one coming out here and someone coming down here, but as far as you've noticed this side, we don't have a walking stick out.

We can do two things. Or if we can find two cans, for example, there is one over here on the back, we can bend around and tie it into a wooden frame so that it will go in the same direction. Grape canes are very flexible and they can bend and move in any direction you want to move them.

You may find grape crops that are not trimmed properly. In this case, you can fix it in a single season. For example, this is a raisin that has been allowed to stay from two years ago. It's not cut off and it should have been. In this case, we have to take the whole thing out. You can delete in the section more easily

Early on, when this vineyard was established, there were plants planted here, then it died. So we don't have a factory here, we have 6 feet on this side and about six feet on the other side, instead of replacing this plant, all we have to do is allow those cans from the side to grow a little bit further. Instead of cutting them off about six feet you can let them grow from ten to twelve feet as you can see from our ranches that we cut out, they will easily grow twenty-five or thirty feet. So you will have plenty of cane and we don't have to worry about replacing this factory. There are still plenty of leaves in this grape production – even if the plant is gone.

If you read some of the guides on pruning grapes, they talk about allowing about fifty buds to remain in the plant. These eyes are spaced about six inches apart. So when we talk about leaving six feet long, it means we'll have about twelve eyes ready.

This is the eye forming here. This will actually produce grapes this season – just like this, and this, and this. So there will be a group of grapes about every six inches according to this. There's one at the top and one in the middle, and the new will form back off the trunk or branch on the existing li. Health as close to the trunk as possible, and then to leave that expanded this year. Therefore, this foot will produce one year, then it will be removed.

Don't worry if you happen to break out the eyes. There are several eyes in the grape cluster. If one happens to break off or freeze, there will be another eye to move and take place - usually up to about three eyes.