Everything beginners need to know about pruning grapes

Today it is no longer possible to surprise anyone with a vineyard in your garden. But it is worth remembering that grapes are a rather demanding plant. In order to get a large harvest, while maintaining the health of the plant, you need to spend a lot of effort. A budding gardener can even ruin grapes if he acts at random. One of the essential maintenance processes is pruning. This article is devoted to exactly how to carry out grape pruning for beginners.

Optimal trimming time

First of all, a beginner should know when to prune. It can vary based on the grape variety.

For example, professional gardeners recommend pruning covering species in autumn. This will help to better and efficiently carry out the shelter and will well protect the bush from possible frosts. On top of that, maintaining your pruned bush in the spring will be easier, and you will have more harvest next fall.

In the case when the bushes have overwintered normally, a normalizing fragment is carried out during spring growth.

It is not recommended to prune the plant in the spring (sometimes this error can be found among novice gardeners). This is due to the fact that grapes are characterized by slow healing of various injuries. When pruning vines before or at the very beginning of sap flow, the formation of "tears" on the cut is possible. As a result, there is no need to hope for a good yield of the bush, and this is at best, and at worst, the death of the entire plant is possible.

In spring, only careful pruning is possible, but only when the air temperature is not lower than +5 degrees. This method can only cut off seedlings planted in the fall or young grapes that have not yet entered the fruiting period. If you still have little experience in this matter, then without an urgent need it is better to refrain from such pruning.

Pruning can also be done in the summer, but this will not be a full-fledged process. It consists in plucking shoots, pinching, chasing and breaking out branches that are no longer needed.

Pruning non-covering varieties differs in that it can be carried out immediately after the sheets have completely fallen, and not just before covering. In this case, you will achieve the absence of "tears" in the spring. But this option also has disadvantages:

• reducing the resistance of the bush to frost and frost;
• the inability to compensate for potential kidney damage (can only be compensated by leaving the eyes).

Knowing all the subtleties of grape pruning for beginners at different times, you can avoid a lot of problems.

Carrying out this or that pruning, you need to clearly navigate the features of each of them, so as not to lead the plant to death.

Why prune?

Some amateur gardeners, carrying out the above manipulations, do not even think about their meaning and do everything "just like that." This applies to beginners who do not fully understand the need for this procedure.

Consider all the advantages of pruning grapes:

• increased productivity. This applies not only to the volume of the crop, but also to the quality and size of the berries themselves;
• an increase in the rate of fruit ripening;
• taking care of the bush and harvesting is much easier;
• the plant takes on a well-groomed appearance (in contrast to uncut bushes, which over time begins to grow in all directions);
• the ability to save frost-damaged branches of a grape bush (its bole). In this case, it is necessary to cut off the aerial part of the bush;
• creation of a new skeleton of a bush in the case when its aboveground part died;
• prevention of most diseases (especially for summer pruning);
• an increase in the general ventilation of the bush;
• increasing the intake of sunlight for the bunches;
• creation of the most favorable conditions for the ripening of the crop;
• elimination of unnecessary, sick, weakened and broken branches;
• increasing the flow of nutrients to the berries;
• makes it possible to ripen those vines that will be needed next year;
• thinning of leaves.

Thus, based on the number of the above advantages of this process, we can confidently say that it is simply necessary to carry out these manipulations. Moreover, this must be done on time and correctly.

Pruning instruction

Instructions on how to prune vines may vary. It all depends on the time of its holding.

Algorithm of actions in the spring:

• before starting the procedure, be sure to read the necessary literature or consult with experienced gardeners;
• prepare all the necessary tools: garden saw, pruner, scissors;
• tools must be well washed and sharpened;
• it is necessary to start pruning in March before the eye swells and rapid sap flow;
• you need to remove or just shorten the old crown and annual shoots;
• you need to inspect the bush and start the thinning process - removing all unnecessary and diseased vines and branches;
• when choosing a new fruit shoot, the following characteristics must be taken into account: health, strength and growth rate, diameter (not less than 6 mm);
• the replacement knot should be the branch that grows closest to the stem;
• pruning occurs by the following method - a thick vine is bent towards oneself and the desired branch is removed with sliding movements of a saw or pruner;
• on a bush, after secondary vegetation, you can remove from 50 to 90% of the growth per year;
• it is necessary to leave, without fail, two healthy and strong shoots;
• these shoots are shortened by five eyes;
• the cuts should be smooth, without the formation of large wounds on the wood;
• the cut should be done only perpendicularly, without bevel;
• you can form the necessary "skeleton" on a young bush;
• circumcision is carried out "on the fruit link", leaving on each shoulder a small amount of vine with shoots that have sprouted in a year;
• the upper shoot or fruit arrow is cut into six buds;
• one vine must be left to bear fruit;
• then repeat the process the next year.

By following these instructions, you can form a two-sided fan-shaped vine bush.

Remember that during the first growing season you need to get two healthy and strong shoots, and during the second - 4, after the third - 8.

Consequently, in three years you will get a fully formed grape bush and the first harvest.

After that, it remains only to form the number of inflorescences - leaving one bunch for two shoots, you can get larger berries.

Pruning instructions in the fall:

• they start pruning after the leaves have fallen or before the shelter;
• the branches of the second year are cut into two buds, while the branches of the third and fourth years need to be shortened by four buds;
• only broken, infected branches are removed. More, in this situation, pruning is not recommended, otherwise you can significantly harm the plant.

Useful Tips

Experienced growers, over the years of working with the plant, have developed a number of useful tips that will help novice gardeners avoid many problems and setbacks.

Helpful hints for newbies to pruning behavior:

• during this procedure, it is necessary to leave four buds on the replacement knot, while on the fruit arrow - 11 or 13 each (it is necessary for safety reasons if the winter is very frosty and there is a strong freezing of the branches);
• damage, wounds and cuts should be on the inside of the shoots, which faces the middle of the bush. This will lead to optimal recovery and movement of the juices;
• the cuts should be as smooth as possible;
• the shoots that you leave for fruiting must be undamaged, healthy, perfectly ripe, have a maximum length, have an average thickness and a diameter of about 6-12 mm;
• do not damage perennial shoots;
• after harvesting, you need to accurately determine the shoot that has already borne fruit and cut it off;
• for better orientation during these manipulations, the branches needed to remove can be marked, leaving clusters of berries on them;
• you should not cut the vine branches into a ring, as is customary for other crops. Pruning in this situation is carried out with the preservation of a small hemp, since the wounds on the grapes do not tend to overgrow, but only dry out;
• do not keep pruning until next year;
• Of all the tools, the secateurs are considered the most convenient and practical to use.

Video "Pruning grapes in the fall"

In this video, you can view a visual instruction for the autumn pruning of grapes.

In order for even a beginner in gardening to be able to prune grapes, you must first familiarize yourself with the proper recommendations of experienced gardeners and only then proceed to the direct process. Otherwise, you risk getting the opposite of what you expected, and the resulting picture of a dead grape bush will not please anyone.