Finally I had a chance today to get round to doing the first prune on the vines chez Gordon and Jackie. I was only just in time, but on the other hand, as I prune four times a year, it did only take an hour and a half including tidying up and only produced two wheelbarrow loads of off cuts for John to burn when the fancy takes him. The soft wood prunings are composted but these are dry and old wood and therefore don't compost well. The scale of the problem is this.
Close up, you can see that the new growth buds are really well formed, and I was only just in time for this first pruning.
I am pretty ruthless, though probably not as much as I should be, but this is what this particular joint looked like after I had pruned it. Note also that the wound is crying as the sap rises - it won't do this on later pruning exercises and is a very odd phenomenon. Next year I must be better organised and do this earlier and then I won't have weeping wounds!
I didn't realise there was so much work involved!
Posted by: Anne Donald | 02 April 2011 at 04:26 PM
If you want a nice vine awning, you can let them go a bit mad, but vines for juice/wine as these are need to be carefully controlled. Mind you, I didn't get the information on this from a UK source. I had to rely on local French chums and the wonderful French gardening magazine Rustica to help me through.
Posted by: Jane | 02 April 2011 at 08:03 PM