Vine pruning

Before taking advantage of the weather to go and do the lawn, or at least the bits my little electric mower will let me do, I am taking a well earned rest with a cup of tea to recover from vine pruning.  We look after two rows of vines for a chum who isn't around often enough to do it himself, and in return, if we do it right, we get loads of grapes for making juice in the autumn.

In our experience, vines are not a low maintenance option for the garden.  For a start, there is the pruning, but indeed before you can start on that, someone has to clear the track for you to see what you are doing - this is more a strimming job, unless you go for the chemical approach and remove all competition for a few yards on either side.  So this is what faced me this afternoon.

John had been through with the strimmer last week, and if I wanted to catch the gap and assured dry weather, it had to be today.  Until I got up-close and personal with the vines, it was difficult to know whether they had flowered yet - if you see what I mean.

However once I was in there, I could see that most of the flowering was over and that some tiny grapes had started to form.  In this second pruning of the year, every growing shoot needs to be cut back to the flower bunch (and to ensure better fruit, I was mean and kept most of them to one flower truss per stem, rather than the two they wanted), while those shoots without flower trusses on need a bit of thought.  If the vine is less robust and well covered, then the leaves on such shoots will help to source food for the root stock, if the vine is vigorous, they need to be removed to ensure that the maximum effort goes into the fruit.

This gives me a vine that looks rather like this.

While the finished row looks like this - much less wild and woolly and more professional somehow!

And you are right, different row!  I did the photos to give me a breather after doing the first row and before tackling the second and then tidying up.  Each row is about 50 meters long and we have been working with the vines for three years now, after they had been neglected for about three years.  Last year we took about 80 kilos off for juicing, and we were a bit picky as to which grapes we chose.

I prune this lot four times a year - once in March to remove the old growth, once in May/June to get the early growth off, once in late July to get rid of another flush of growth and any late flowers, and at the end of August to let the sun get to the ripening grapes and allow air to circulate in those final important few weeks until harvest.  The grapes here are mostly small, black, full of pips but very yummy.  The juice is almost too rich to drink on its own and is either diluted with water or with other juices for a non-alcoholic cocktail.  Black grape juice is supposed to be one of those super foods.

 
 
 
 

Comments

[Anne Donald]

We have two vines in pots on the deck in the back garden. They are just showing some tiny grapes - but we don't have the weather for them to mature - last year they ripened, but the grapes were the size of small peas!! However, we don't mind, as we really only have them for decoration!