Sarah Lowder, viticulture extension specialist, spoke with Specialty Crop Grower to share key grape vine pruning tips for grape producers to remember ahead of the season.
“They want to do it while it’s dormant,” Lowder said. “They need to be thinking about the training style that they’re going for — even if it’s a homeowner growing it on a fence for instance. I was just talking to some folks who were growing some vines through a fence, and they have the vine growing all the way through all the chain link portions, which can be really easy for helping it stay where it should be. But it also will girdle the vines as it starts to grow large enough.
“It’s trying to balance the structure that you have and making sure the vine can continue to grow unhindered for as long as possible before you have to go in and make big cuts because you’ve girdled the vine or some sort of thing like that.”
Annual pruning retains fruitful buds and prevents disease and compromised crop quality.
“When you are pruning, you are trying to set your cropping potential. Your fruit is coming off the chutes that were formed last year. It’s coming into its second year, and that’s the wood that’s going to produce your fruit,” Lowder said. “But if you don’t prune at all, you tend to get way more fruit that’s going to have much lower quality. That can potentially damage the vine going forward.”