Grape Trimming

[Runningwolf]

Last year I noticed vineyards were being trimmed rather early. Taking note this year I also see a lot of the vineyards in New York and PA are already trimmed and workers are visable trimming. Upon investigating I found out the native grapes like Concords and Niagara which mostly go to Welches are trimmed immediately after harvest. The wine grapes are trimmed much later in the winter.

 

[Rocky]

Dan,

I think Andy at Casa Larga Vineyards (Fairport, NY) used to trim his wine grapes after the leaves turned and started to fall in November and December. Could not have been long after that because we used to get a heck of a lot of snow starting in January.

 

[Larryh86GT]

I pruned my 2 Marquis grapevines a couple of days ago. It was a nice day and it wasn't snowing yet.

 

[AlFulchino]

i usually wait for a full pruning when late winter / early spring comes...lots of places w milder climates or more gentle winters will do a pre-prune now and final touch in spring to save time and more evenly distribute the workload

 

[Runningwolf]

Larry is that a green seedless grape and how are they?

 

[Larryh86GT]

Yes Dan - they are a white seedless table grape. I think this was year 4 or 5 for the 2 vines and with the dry summer we had the grapes were a little on the small side but they were the sweetest grapes we have ever eaten. If the vines ever produce enough I would like to make a small batch of wine from them. I was hoping to just keep them on the vine this year and eat some of them everyday but when I saw that the birds and the squirrels were helping themselves I picked all of them and we ate some and gave the rest away. I planted 3 reliance vines this year also. Growing your own grapes is pretty cool.

 

[Runningwolf]

Larry I have 86 gallons of this going right now. I don't know of any winery in the area that makes it but we had an order from out west for 500 gallons. We ended up with quiet a bit more then that so we were able to split up what was extra since we don't make that kind of wine. I plan on making it semi sweet and may even blend a bit with some Cranberry or Raspberry wine.

 

[Larryh86GT]

There's a thought for next year - a wine made from the Maquis grapes and the late crop of raspberries.

 

[grapeman]

Larry spend a few bucks and get some bird netting from Lowes. That should keep most of the birds and squirrels out. We aren't all as lucky as AlFulchino with no bird pressure , disease pressure, insect pressure or weeds. I think his address should be Utopia! LOL Al, I wish I was that lucky. You sure you aren't sitting on a radioactive stockpile

 

[Larryh86GT]

I have a large netting that I put over my raspberries for their first crop of the year to keep the robins from raiding the berries and it does work well. But it's just nylon and won't help with the %&#^@ squirrels.