How to Prune Grapes

Hi this Yolanda Vanveen and in this segment we're going to talk about how to prune grapes. Grapes are such a delight to grow and harvest and enjoy whether you eat them as a grape or you make them into wine, they're just a beautiful addition to your fruit garden. And there's some rules that you should follow when you prune your grapes. So the best time to prune your grapes is when they're dormant, so in the wintertime. You want to remove at least 90% of the growth from that year. So you want to keep the old wood but you want to cut back the new growth from that year. So when you're growing a grape plant, usually the first year you don't get a lot of growth, it just grows onto the wire. And then by the second growing season, you will find that you'll get some growth on the bottom and then on the top and you can start training the vines to go either direction. And then by the second winter, you want to actually cutout any of the bottom suckers and any of the top suckers and just leave the two main vines and then that's what will grow the best for the next year. So by the third growing season you'll find that they'll be lots of new growth and they'll grow very vigorously. But then that next winter you want to cut out all of the extra growth, not the main vine, but you only want to leave these two or three vines that are in the black. So this is called cane pruning and you want to do that the third winter before you prune it any farther. And then after the winter, you will find that they will grow very lush again. Now spur pruning is different than cane pruning. On cane pruning you're pretty much cutting everything out. With spur pruning you're just cutting it down to just a few nods on each growth. So you're just cutting all of the longer branches and just leaving the shorter branches. And then that way you'll have little short spurs that will fill out really nicely that next spring and you'll get lots of fruit. And then from then on out, you just kind of prune out any of the new growth each year and you'll find that you'll get lots and lots of grapes from year on out. So by taking the time and creating your grapevines and setting the basis for the future, you'll find that you'll get lots and lots of grapes.