Pruning Question

Hello everyone. I've poked around this forum for a few years on occasion; great stuff by everyone. I've got about 35 Marquette vines in the ground. My first row is coming into year 4, second row into year 2. Last fall I made my first home-grown batch of wine ever - it was only about 1.5 gallons, but it was a blast.



On to my question... I'm spur pruning on GDC, tilted like I've seen Grapeman has done. A month or so ago I pruned everything on the cordons back to one bud. I was expecting growth at "A", "C", and "E". But I didn't think anything would be growing out of "B", "D", "F", and "H" given that the cordon is now 2 years old. Clearly I'm wrong! So, my question is - should I be pruning back to just the B/D/F/H buds?



One other thought... I'm in MN, and it's been a warm spring. I'm a little nervous about what could happen if things open up and we get a frost - anytime in the next 4 weeks it could still happen. Would it be wise to just leave everything as-is for now in case a frost shows up?

THANKS!

First off, your vineyard is looking great!

I don't grow Marquette and live in a totally different region from you so take my advise with a grain of salt. My vines are planted 4' apart so I leave a decent amount of buds on each spur (4th season, 20-30 buds total). My vines tend to send 1 or 2 shoots from every bud during the growing season.

It looks to me like B H D F are buds emerging from the two year old cane. The fruitful new shoots usually arise from the 1 year old growth like A G C E. I usually leave 2 or 3 buds per spur at pruning time picking off any buds arising from wood over 1 year old. You can always prune off any unwanted shoots at anytime after frost as well in case of some frost damage.

I normally prune back to the newly laid down cane so I would have pruned off the small spurs you left the first year. That leaves a large enough crop for the young vine. Then next year prune it as you have done this year. Since you have it that way I would leave it as is, but in the future before the buds break prune back to the cane the first year and then prune to spurs the next year. It will take some trial and error with Marquestte as you will get some unhardened wood that will die back every year.

Grapeman - Are you saying you would have pruned off all the 1 year old wood on here? I think that's the opposite of what LoveTheWine is saying - he'd leave the 1 year old wood and buds coming off of it (ACEG) but pick off BDFH.

Also, not sure I understand this comment - would you be willing to elaborate?

grapeman said:

That leaves a large enough crop for the young vine.

Click to expand...

Thanks,
-mc

When did you lay down the cane that has all those things on it? If it was two years ago then you could treat them as spurs. If it was layed down last year then I might prune the laterals off the first year. You would get enough grapes by just retaining BHDF. I find that important to clip off the small lateral shoots. Now if they were true shoots that grew last year off from a cane laid down the year before they would be the size of a penicil and you keep those as spurs. If they were smaller than pencil size they were probably just laterals that grew off the cane all in the same year.

mattyc said:

Grapeman - Are you saying you would have pruned off all the 1 year old wood on here? I think that's the opposite of what LoveTheWine is saying - he'd leave the 1 year old wood and buds coming off of it (ACEG) but pick off BDFH.

Also, not sure I understand this comment - would you be willing to elaborate?


Thanks,
-mc

Click to expand...

As far as that comment, these vines are young so you don't want huge crop on them. You are showing eight buds there on a single arm. That will give you about 16 clusters on that arm ( and it looks to only be a foot and a half long or so). That makes at least 32 clusters per young vine. I would opt for half that amount on the young vines.

mattyc said:

Grapeman - Are you saying you would have pruned off all the 1 year old wood on here? I think that's the opposite of what LoveTheWine is saying - he'd leave the 1 year old wood and buds coming off of it (ACEG) but pick off BDFH.

Also, not sure I understand this comment - would you be willing to elaborate?


Thanks,
-mc

Click to expand...

Matty, Grapeman has way more experience with grape growing then me, so I would listen to his wealth of knowledge.
How you prune totally will depend on of the type of grape, where it is grown, how old the vines are and how vigorous it grows.

For example I live on the north west coast where growing conditions are amazing and my vines are very vigorous. We grow Foch grapes which grow in small clusters so I leave more of them on then I suppose you would with other varieties.

grapeman said:

When did you lay down the cane that has all those things on it? If it was two years ago then you could treat them as spurs. If it was layed down last year then I might prune the laterals off the first year.

Click to expand...

The cane was laid down two years ago (summer of 2014), and at the beginning of 2015 I pruned off any laterals that may have grown so that I just had a bare cane on the wire. Anything growing off of that cane is 1-yr old wood.

grapeman said:

As far as that comment, these vines are young so you don't want huge crop on them. You are showing eight buds there on a single arm. That will give you about 16 clusters on that arm ( and it looks to only be a foot and a half long or so). That makes at least 32 clusters per young vine. I would opt for half that amount on the young vines.

Click to expand...

It's a GDC system, so there are two fruiting zones for each vine. I think that doubles the math you used here.

So, it sounds like you'd agree that I keep ACEG, which are growing out of the 1-yr old wood (spurs) and eliminate BDFH. That would gives me one bud growing out of 1-yr wood about every 6". In my older row of vines, most have filled up the trellis system, and they're on 7-foot spacing. That means I'd have 14 buds on each wire, for 28 buds in all, yielding 56 clusters/vine if I kept two clusters per shoot. Is that nuts?!? or reasonable?

Thanks for your patience!

It might give you a bit more crop than you want for those young vines. They will grow and probably ripen but the wood might not harden enough before it freezes and then they will die back a lot. I wouldn't get rid of the buds at the base of the spurs though. If you need to lessen the crop drop the clusters from those shoots keeping it on the spurs. The reason for this is so you can use BDFH as the spurs next year. If you use ACEG as spurs next year you will have the length of this years spur plus the growth to the first node on those next year. If the nodes are 3 inches apart you have a 3 inch spur this year, 6 next and then 9,12,15 and so on. Those spurs get way too long. So you can probably prune of this years spurs next year keeping the shoots BDFH as the spurs. That way you keep the spur length down. All this will make sense to you if you study the vines as they grow this year and in the future.

Rich, even if you dropped the fruit on the spur and kept the fruit on the lower shoot, wouldn't it still be ok to use as a spur next year? Or is there another reason to let the fruit grow on the spur keeping the non-fruiting cane for spurs next year? Would they be stronger if they don't have fruit?

My reasoning for this is that the shoot would get thicker than if you left the fruit on it, giving a better spur next year. No reason to keep the spurs this year if you keep the fruit on them. By clipping off the small spurs from this year next year, you are keeping the spur shorter. Things are never 100% predictable and a decision will need to be made next year on what to keep for spurs but this will leave healthier choices for those spurs next year. After you have a number of years pruning experience it will become second nature.

Rich - Interesting, I wouldn't have considered that... keeping both.

Regarding spur length, I was wondering about that. Most pictures of spurs I see are short and stubby. I'm looking at these thinking exactly as you mention... they're going to be 3", then 6", then 9". It sounds like you're saying that isn't the case when you get a really good/strong/big cane going, rather, you're more likely to have a thicker/shorter spur.

My concern if I let them grow out of both locations (but only kept fruit growing off of the spur buds ACEG) is that the canopy would get really thick. Sunlight penetration, getting and staying wet could become issues. Thoughts on that or am I overthinking it?

Yes it can begin to get thick, but that is more when you get summer laterals growing as well as the original shoots. By carrying enough shoots and the proper amount of clusters the shoots that grow are kept mostly in check lengthwise (3-4 feet). Too few shoots and they will get 10 to 15 feet long. So your reaction is to hedge or skits to shorten them. That forces laterals and the vine becomes a tangled mess. Instead of 1 extra shoot per spur, now you get 8 to 10 extra shoots. How you get those short spurs is by constantly cutting back the previous years growth. You need something to cut back to, and that generally is from a basal shoot growing the year before. You can take off the extra buds this year, but at some point you need to begin leaving some to cut back to. Like I said you will begin to see this as you watch and study their growth.