1st year vine conflicting advice.

[marcopolo]

Hi all,

i've planted my black hamburg grape, roots outside the greenhouse in a nice big prepared hole and lead the vine in the greenhouse. I am wondering what to do in the first year now. I want just one main horizontal stem (but vertically up to the eave or trellis height to begin) and in subsequent years the verical shoots to rise from the eave to the apex.

I've trawled the web and am getting conflicting 'what you should do in the first year' advice!!

Some state you should just let to grow any which way during the growing season to establish a healthy root system, then winter prune.

Others state that you should pick the 'best' shoot and train that as the main trunk and cut all others back to 1 leaf so that all the energy goes into growing that main stem.

Both arguments make sense to me which one....??

If the latter, do I just pick the fastest growing one?

thanks,

Marco.

 

[marcopolo]

.....arrrgggghh and i've found more seemingly contradictory advice for the first year.....some diagrams are showing on the first winter to prune the new growth to back to the first cordon wire leaving the only main trunk, whilst others are saying to prune right at the bottom to about 3 buds..which one?!!

I've gone through 40 pages of threads here on this forum and found no exact answers so I can only assume i'm either asking what is common knowlegde or there is no accepted right or wrong!

help!!

 

[dessertmaker]

I'm no vintner, but I did grow up with a garden rake in my hand and here's the best advice you'll get. No matter what anyone here tells you, do this and you will avoid a lot of problems:

Your state has an agriculture department. They pay people who devote their entire lives to studying what makes each different plant and crop grow in each region of your state and what doesn't.

Almost all of them have that information available to the public for free. My state has it posted on the Internet. It's pages of reading per crop.

Call your agg department and ask them for some literature on growing X in your specific area and follow their basic advice.

 

[Brew and Wine Supply]

both are somewhat correct, You want a good root system and strong main shoot. I've let some go for up to two years then trimmed back to how I wanted it, others I have trimmed from the beginning, both with good luck.

The smaller spindler ones I let go, the stronger more vigorous ones I trim.

 

[grapeman]

There is no real right or wrong, but Doug you have it backwards. For stunted vines, it is very important to prune back to several buds. Those fewer buds get all the vigor of the vine-limited as it is. That forces them to grow larger and catch up. The more vigorous vines can be left longer as long as it is the size of a pencil. Because the vine has more vigor, it can feed more buds to normal size shoots.

Sorry if no exact right or wrong- vines are foregiving and can grow well in spite of the treatment they get.

 

[Brew and Wine Supply]

If I prune some of my small ones back there won't be anything left. as for the big ones, they need pruning to keep them in check.
This spring I did some tough love on some of the smaller ones where I cringed when I cut them for fear I would kill them.

 

[grapeman]

All you need for the small ones is 2-3 viable buds to get great growth. The large ones need a higher bud count to grow to help soak up some of the vine's excessive vigor. Just prune to get it to the shape you want and not much else. One of the biggest mistakes I see time and again is people want to prune the heck out of a vigorous vine. The vine has tremendous energy stores in the roots and when excessively pruned, it leads to bull cane production and the beginning of an imbalanced vine. Take less off it and you get a better shoot size that isn't too large and bullish.

Think like this- If you have a group of five people and only 2 loaves of bread and water. Get rid of 3 people (just kick them off the island don't eat them) and the two people stay full for a few days. Now you have a large flock of 40 people in a group, but they just found a whole breadtruck. You can safetly feed all 40 people without them getting too fat, but if you figure you will get rid of 30 of them just to keep the crowd from getting too big that only leaves 10 people to eat a bread trucks worth of bread (actually they found a couple trays of donuts also) they would be a smaller group but would surely get too fat and probably be unhealthy.

If you found this parable (some may call it a load of bull) helpful, like this post.

 

[marcopolo]

Thankyou for all the advice. What I think i'll do this first summer/autumn is 'let it go'. If at the end of the season i'm seeing poor growth from all 3 or 4 of the shoots that there are currently are i'll prune hard in winter to 3ish buds. If it is vigorous throughout the summer (it does seem to be growing moderately) i'll winter prune leaving one leader at the wire height.