Monday, December 2, 2013

How to Prune and Maintain Your Grapevine

Wine making, weather in large vineyards or small backyards has a long standing history. Maintaining a productive grapevine takes a lot of dedication. Like any other plant, grapevines also need proper care from pest controlling, to weeding, to pruning grapes. It can take almost three years to grow grapes on your vine. When it's finally time to harvest them, making sure you've maintained your vineyard throughout the process will help assure your vineyard grows further after being harvested.It takes a lot of years to train your grapevines, as far as its size, its shape, and its productivity is concerned. The grapevine actually starts to take shape the moment you erect your trellis. Once the vines start to grow, be sure to clip back any forms of shoots that grow from the roots. Tie the shoots to the trellis vertically. After some time, you may want to start developing some arms on your vine. Add two shoots on either sides of your main shoot and tie them to the trellis horizontally. This will act as the base for the arms and fruits of your vines. Keep unwanted shoots away by trimming them regularly. Once the vine starts to take shape, you can simply prune it during its dormant periods. Remember that it is during this time when pruning is very critical for your grape production.There are different pruning approaches to be considered, depending on the types of grapes grown in the vineyard. In cases of the hybrid varieties, annual pruning can help them remove all those unwanted fruiting canes or spurs. Hybrid varieties are developed to withstand various diseases due to there lack of foliage. You can actually produce new healthy canes on the vine annually.With pruning, you can also reduce your production when you remove those fruitful buds. This can help you vary your production amount. If you prune too much, you will end up producing more crops as more shoots will grow on the grape vine. Additionally, when the vine has more foliage these will create a shady canopy, and can somehow lessen the ability of the grape to fully ripen because the canopy can cause a poor environment for the vineyard.When pruning grapevines, you can use various tools such as hand pruners, loppers, and handsaws. Keep in mind that the goal here is to simply avoid any unnecessary injuries to the plant. For one year old shoots, hand pruners are the most ideal ones. For larger ones, loppers or a handsaw are more useful.Pruning grapes is not only simple, but also a very important process for grape growing. Your desire to have a productive grapevine goes hand in hand with getting yourself down and dirty. And with that, you can eventually achieve a plentiful and fruitful harvest.

Alexa Aren is a winemaking enthusiast and author. She lives in Montreal and spends her time teaching others how to grow their own grapes and make amazing wine. For more great tips on grape pruning [http://www.thebackyardvineyard.com/grape-pruning.html] and winemaking visit [http://www.thebacky

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