CUT GRAPES FOR WINTER + SCHEME

Please write how to prune grapes for the winter.

Nadezhda Volkova, Tula region.

Answered by Nikolai Rogovtsov, agronomist

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The grape plant annually grows a large number of young shoots. If pruning and other green operations are not regularly carried out, the bush becomes powerful, heavily thickened, and unproductive. For this reason, grapes are pruned annually to maintain the shape of the bush, which was created before fruiting began.

The main pruning of fruit-bearing bushes is carried out in late autumn, before frost, but before the soil freezes. By this time, the main amount of nutrients accumulated in the ground mass flows into the lower parts of the bush, which ensures better wintering of the grapevines left for fruiting in the next season.

The advantage of autumn pruning in areas of covered viticulture is that the pruned bushes with the remaining vines are easier to tie into bunches and cover for the winter.

When pruning, you need to remove all immature, underdeveloped shoots, as well as fruit shoots growing from the base of the bush. together with the fruitful shoots of the current year from which the harvest has been harvested. Thus, up to 80% of shoots of different ages are removed from the bush annually. The tops of young shoots with unripe wood are removed. The cut is made above the eye. The distance from the eye to the cut is about 3 cm.

In the conditions of northern viticulture, cultivated grape varieties are grown with an underground trunk, in which sleeves or shoulders are first formed on the head of the bush - vines, which consist of perennial wood older than two years. The sleeves serve not only as a support, but also as conductors of water and nutrients for the fruiting parts of the bush (fruit shoots and replacement knots), as well as a place for their reserves.

At the end of each sleeve annually form renewed fruit links - fruit arrow and replacement knot. A young fruit arrow, left on the sleeve in the fall of the current year, will have green fruitful shoots with clusters of berries growing from its eyes next season. If, with good care, the bush grows well and develops powerfully, two fruit shoots and one replacement knot can be left in the fruit link. The fruit shoots are shortened, leaving 8-14 eyes on them, depending on the thickness of the bush.

Replacement knot 1 is formed from an annual vine, which is located directly below the remaining annual fruit shoot (3), but not in the lower part of the bush, but on the sleeve and facing outward of the bush. It is cut off, leaving 2-4 eyes. On the left replacement knot, shoots will develop next year; one or two upper ones should be left in place of the fruit-bearing shoots, and the lower one should be cut to a new replacement knot (see sleeve a).

Sleeves become old after 10-15 years and need to be replaced with new ones.. Their tissues of conducting vessels die off, as a result of which young shoots do not receive the required amount of nutrients and water and develop poorly. To form new sleeves, leave the vine located at the base of the bush, which is cut into 2-4 eyes. If the sleeves do not need to be changed, then such a vine is cut out at the base of the bush.

When on the replacement knot left last fall, only one shoot developed out of the remaining four eyes, then it was again cut to a replacement branch (1), and for fruiting, one of the best annual fruit-bearing shoots (2) is left as a new arrow at the base of the removed fruiting arrow 3 (see sleeve 6).

If shoots have not developed at all on the replacement knot, then the lowest shoot on the fruit shoot 3 or that grew directly on the sleeve is cut to the new branch. As a future fruiting arrow, a shoot is left on the fruiting arrow 3 (see sleeves c, d).

Reference by topic: Forming and pruning grapes for beginners + pruning SCHEME