How To Prune Grapes - The Early Years

If you are planning to grow grapes in your own home or garden, learning how to prune them is a vital step which you must take. For some reason, pruning seems to be the most overlooked part of grape growing in general. People take great care of their vines in the first few days, weeks and months, but because no fruit can be expected within the first year, the vines are quickly forgotten about for years to come, these are the times when pruning is essential. Now they are destined to become overgrown and will not be producing a decent harvest neither this year nor the next.

It is a good idea to keep your pruning techniques as simple as possible. The two major methodologies are referred to as ‘spur pruning’ and ‘cane pruning’. The former is a little simpler, we therefore recommend it for beginning grape growers. We will now cover the basics of spur pruning so you are able to get started straight away.

For the duration of the first summer after your vines are planted, just let them grow naturally, no pruning will be needed during this period. Growth during the first summer is very important and will have a great effect on the future success of your vines, so try not to inhibit it. When the first summer period is coming to an end, you will want to take some pruning action that will encourage maximum growth of your grapes in the coming year. As we move from summer to winter, select the single shoot which looks to be the strongest and most promising. You will not want to do anything to this shoot, just remove all of the others. This will allow the vine to direct all of its energy into the single best shoot it has produced.

When the second summer season approaches, you will need to begin thinking about pruning some more. This year you will be carrying out more work on your vines than in year one. New shoots will begin to grow in the second summer, you will want to begin pruning when they reach about 1 foot in length. It is now time to select the few strongest looking shoots and prune the rest away. In order to give your most promising shoots the best chance of maximising growth, it will be necessary to provide them with some support. A simple stake can be used as a support structure, just carefully tie to shoots to this stake.

At some point, the major shoot will grow to be as high as the top of your trellis. You will now want to pinch it off to encourage future branching. As you begin to see these branches appear, select one which is growing to the left and one to the right. The remaining branches should be cut back to around 9 inches in length. When the second summer comes to an end, cut back everything except the two strongest branches you identified earlier.

In all future years you will just need to prune the shoots that appear from the main vertical trunk of your vines. After the summer growing months, check the vertical trunk and remove these shoots. Now move to the horizontal branches, cutting the strongest shoots and pruning them so that they keep only 2 buds each. All other shoots will need to be removed completely so the vine can concentrate on growing the stronger ones.

By: Ryan J Jacbos

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Ryan J Jacobs is the owner of HowGrapesGrow.com and an expert on all aspects of grape growing, including how to prune grape vines for maximum growth. Take a trip over to his site for more information and a FREE grape growing mini course.