Found lots of info on damage to canes and buds and a little on trunk damage but pretty much nothing that explained how I can tell if my vines are dead and need to be replanted. Most buds bit the dust in winter, and my oldest vines (maybe 6 or 7 years old) have zero buds, and every cane that I have cut into on those plants shows no green at all. I suspect that if I slice into the bark and trunk that I will see no green there either. But if that is the case what does that mean, how can I know if the grapes are completely done? If they are I want to grab a few more merlot plants that I saw at the garden centre before they are gone, but these vines have trunks that are two to three inches thick at their thickest point and i don't want to pull them unnecessarily. Anyone have any resource they can point me to that says "if you are seeing XXXXX then you have no choice but to replant"???
How exactly can I tell if winter killed vines????
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If you have a grafted vine and all growth above the swollen graft union are dead- you have no choice but to replant. There. That wasn't hard.
I feel your pain.
I feel your pain.
But how can I tell if it is dead? My Pinot Noir looks dead, but is dripping sap at every pruning point, but buds that formed last year all died. Given the sap running I didn't want to test it out by cutting into it, so that one I'm going to leave. A Merlot with cordons that were so low to the ground that the spend most of the winter protected by it has some buds that are growing and have grape bunches. Baco Noir is, i think, a little more hardy, and again cordons were so low to the ground that they were covered by snow and not exposed to extreme windchill, but even so there were slow to re-bud (last year's buds didn't make it and new buds are forming now). But for the two large merlot plants the trunk and cordons and spurs were fully exposed (except for the bottom foot or so of the trunk), and I can't see any sign of green anywhere, after pruning away the last of last year's vines, or clipping away the cordons from the end all the way to the trunk, or slicing away at the trunk into the flesh...no green anywhere....but which parts of the vine should be green once the vine is old, doesn't the woody part of the trunk become completely woody with no green portions?
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If you are unsure about the trunk or the cordon being alive, leave them alone for now to see if any adventitious buds (basal buds, etc) will sprout out. If it is truly dead, nothing will grow. You could replant some vines in between the ones you think are dead. If the old ones don't bud out after a few months pull them and leave the new ones there.
Thats exactly what I was thinking...these ones are in some raised boxes adjacent to some raised beds, as all I have is clay clay clay, so I could easily put a few new plants in the garden and then replace the potentially dead ones after things shut down in the fall/winter. Thanks for the input...shame, the older vines have always been covered with buds and foliage, can't believe this winter was enough to completely do them in. Next year burlap wrap for all (I only have 8 vines so not too much work).
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