Spur Pruning Part 2.

So once you have developed spurs how do you prune them once they are established?

Letting spurs produce only two shoots has the advantages of making regulating fruit easier, preventing overcrowding of growth, producing stronger canes and making pruning easier.

In this way the pruning couldn't be easier you simply cut away the cane furthest away from the cordon (branch or arm if you prefer) then prune the lowest cane to two or three buds to produce the fruit and two canes for next year.

Cane Pruning.

The Regent vine has made a lot of growth this year. With such a large  number of canes to choose from only two or three well placed canes are needed to produce next years crop.

Here most of last years growth has been pruned away leaving these three canes (there is one cane behind the trellis).

A huge difference I think you'll agree. Since the shoots can't be trained in opposite directions because of space limitations they are trained in the same direction making tying in and growth positioning even more important during the next growing season.

Spur Pruning Part 1.

Although there are many grape training methods practised world wide the actual pruning under each method involves just two tecniques, cane or spur pruning.

The first thing to understand when pruning any vine under whatever system is that you are going to prune most of this years growth away, 90%-95% so don't be too timid with pruning.

Let's start with spur pruning. Here is an unpruned vine that I want to train as a four armed cordon. Last year canes were placed in position and fruit was produced on the upright shoots.

Now the same vine after pruning with shooots retained at around 9 inch (22cm) spacings and pruned down to two buds to make well spaced spurs. (The two longer shoots at one end are so the arms (cordons) can be extended at that end while being reduced at the other end where the Merzling grape vine will need more space.)

Next year each spur will produce two new shoots and a potential four grape clusters, two on each shoot. At pruning this time next year one shoot will be cut away with the remaining shoot pruned to two buds. Repeat this indefinately.

Wood Ripening.

Once the grapes are harvested that doesn't mean the season is over. Far from it, proper post harvest ripening of the following years wood is important for next seasons fruit.

Here is a Phoenix branch, or cordon, showing well spaced canes that are ripening their wood nicely. Although these canes will be reduced to spurs in the coming winter pruning the vine is locking down for winter in good condition.

Winemaking Day.

Yesterday was winemaking day. The grapes are bought together for this year's white wine blend.

The grapes are whizzed in the food processor to break the skins then placed in the press.

The press is a good stainless steel one that does a pretty good job extracting the grape juice. The container you see holds ten litres so I estimate we have got around six liters of wine. enough for about eight bottles.

Sugar was added to bring the potential alcohol to about 12% by volume. A wine yeast was added also. Fermentation should be complete within ten days or so and the wine will be bottled, stored and begin being drunk around the time of next year's harvest.

Dornfelder Not.

I bought two vines labled as Dornfelder two years ago with the intention of replacing the Brant vine with Dornfelder.

But this plainly is not a Dornfelder - it's a white grape!

Of course it's a huge disappointment and one that has left a problem. Do I keep the unknown grape variety or replace it with true Dornfelder loosing the last two years and waiting another two or three years for fruiting to begin.

What a decision!

Brant - The End Of The Line

Because a blackbird found a way under the net that was protecting the Brant grapes I'm left with no grapes as it has eaten them all.

So now is the point when the vine has to be chopped down.

All that is left now is a stump. The stump will try to push shoots in the spring so they will still have to be dealt with.

Chardonnay Harvest.

Yesterday the Chardonnay grapes were finally picked bringing to a close the harvest for this year.

After sorting them for under ripe and spoilt grapes there are three pounds to add to the thirteen pounds of Phoenix and the few Madeleine Angevine grapes already picked.

This should produce six bottles of blended white wine. Quite good considering what a poor growing season we had this year.

The red grapes have been a write off. A blackbird got in under the net covering the Brant grapes, eating most of them while the Regent grapes are too few to even mention.

First Harvest.

The Phoenix and the few Madeleine Angevine grapes were picked yesterday. It's always a difficult decision when exactly to harvest grapes for wine but as it was sunny yesterday but rain is forecast for the next two days the decision was made for harvesting yesterday.

The Phoenix last year was harvested on the 11th of september and on the 20th the previous year so this year is around two weeks later than average, as predicted earlier.

The total weight yesterday was 13.5 pounds. Enough to contribute four or five bottles of wine to this years blend.

Despite only producing a few bunches the Madeleine Angevine has proved yet again to be the latest in flower and one of the first to ripen.

The Chardonnay grapes are finally beginning to soften but I don't expect them to be ready to harvest until the end of october or even early november.

When Are Wine Grapes Ready?

How can you tell when your wine grapes are ready to harvest.

There is no exact answer to this question, much of it is subjective but the short answer is probably later than you think. Commercial vineyards use a refractometer to measure sugar levels but the expense of getting one for home grape growing is hardly worth it.

So what physiological clues can be used to indicate the potential date of harvest.

1. Know your variety. Different varieties display the potential indicators differently so knowing when your variety usually ripens (early, mid season or late) is the best guideline. Of course this knowledge can only be gained over a number of growing seasons.

2. Stems turning woody. Lignification of the stems is a good indicator that the grapes are getting near to harvest.

3. Rachis turning woody. If the stalk joining the bunch to the stem is turning woody this too is pretty good indicator of ripeness.

4 Pedicels turning woody. If the little stalks joining individual grapes are turning woody this in itself can indicate that the seeds inside the grapes are hardening, therefore the grapes are getting ready to pick

5. Seeds getting hard/woody. You will have to bite into a grape to test this but if the seeds are getting hard or woody this can be the best indicator of all.

I reckon these Phoenix grapes have a week or ten days to go.

Brant - The Usual Story.

As mentioned earlier a good number of the Brant clusters showed only partial setting. While after fruit set a cluster may look fully set it soon becomes obvious some individual berries are swelling and others not.
Those immature berries will never swell or ripen.

Here we can see a cluster showing the phenonomon called "hen and chickens" or "shot berries" in britain, "millerandage" in france.

The main drawback with Brant that can also be seen in the photo is uneven ripening. You can see how one cluster is ripening, one a little behind, one with the first berry changing colour and another cluster still green. This results in an extended harvest, sometimes over a month, going over the vine every week to harvest the ripe clusters.

The leaves have wonderful autumn colour though.

Easy Calculation

All the signs point to this season being behind by two or three weeks. Yet growing grapes on a wall or against a fence can bring ripening forward by a similar time.

From these two facts we can easily calculate that these Phoenix grapes should ripen against the fence at the time they would usually ripen in an open vineyard situation in early october.

Likewise these Chardonnay should ripen but harvest will almost certainly be late october or even early november again as the time open grown Chardonnay is picked.

Regent Ripeness And Harvest Planning.

Table grapes can begin to be harvested earlier and over a longer period than wine grapes. This longer cropping season is one of the advantages of growing eating grapes. Tasting the grapes as they ripen will determine when the first bunches can be picked, when they taste good to you. Unpicked bunches can be left to sweeten further and picked a little later.

If you have a glut you can use them for juice, jelly, freeze them or make raisins if you have a seedless variety.

Wine grapes on the other hand generally need to be harvested when the grapes are fully and consistently ripe since good wine can only be made from good grapes.

These Regent grapes, although on a sparse bunch are fully coloured but a long way from being ripe. Grapes do not ripen further after picking so evaluating ripeness is very important.

In previous years Regent begins veraision just after mid august and are harvested around 3rd october. This year they are about two or three weeks late so harvest could be as late as the third or fourth week of october.

Madeleine Angevine Ripeness And Harvest Planning.

Once grapes go soft and either begin to become translucent for white grapes or colour up for red varieties they tend to begin to look ready to pick.However they are generally far from ripe despite them looking ever more delicious.

This year Madeleine Angevine was the last in flower, the last to set fruit but yet again looks like it will be the first to ripen. They have gone from hard immature fruits to soft, translucent and soon to be harvested grapes in about a month. This is why they are a good choice for growers in the north.

So what about harvesting them. The few bunches I have will be part of a wine blend so will be picked for wine. They are usually ready for picking at toward the end of september but because of the late season harvest will likely be in early october.

Allotment Progress.

I have been concentrating on the grape vines in the garden for most of the year but what progress is there from those planted on the allotment?

While the Brant vine at home is due for removal it won't be the end of the road for that variety. There will still be the ones on the allotment.

These are looking like real vine rows. It's a shame there are only two grape clusters amongst all that foliage. But that sums up this years weather as far as grape vines go.

This Rondo vine look like it will produce fruiting wood for next year. I may even see a bunch of Rondo grapes if I'm lucky.

Success.

The experiment worked, the Phoenix pot layer didn't even notice it had been severed from the parent plant. No wilting, sulking or difference in growth whatsoever so we can assume there are more than sufficient growth to sustain all the top growth it has grown throughout the season.

I moved the top growth of pot layer away from the fence as it was shading some of the ripening grapes and interfering with the Merzling vine that is planted close by. The pot itself is still in the original position so the roots are undisturbed.

Fish Out The Nets.

After spending all year tending the vines It would be dispiriting in the extreme to see your luscious crop of grapes taken by birds. Birds and wasps are the crop's main danger during the ripening process and while, because of the season we had, I don't expect to see huge numbers of wasps this year the same can't be said of birds.

Grape vines evolved for their seeds to be dispersed by birds. And as valid now as it was when grape species first emerged birds find grapes irrisestable. Birds will eat the grapes long before we humans consider them ripe.

While for some it may be a romantic notion to share some of your crop with the birds the plain fact is that birds don't share. If you want to keep your grapes for yourself, after all that is the reason we have taken such care of the vines so far, then the only effective answer is to net them.

Let's see our feathery friends get through this!

Veraison At Last.

Veraison is the french term for the onset of ripening when red grapes begin to show colour and white grapes begin to appear translucent.

Here is the first colour on one of the sparsely filled Regent clusters.

And these Brant aren't too far away. They have lost their bright green colour and are now olive green, a sure indication of verasion about to happen.

White grapes are harder to evaluate at first for veraison as the changes are more subtle than red grapes. But where the Regent leads the others are sure to follow.

Not Everything A Success.

While the Phoenix and Chardonnay vines are doing well both setting a decent crop the Regent and Madeleine Angevine are not.

Just look how sparse the Regent clusters are...

And the Madeleine Angevine are no better.

When Regent are good they are fantastic but their drawback is that they don't set fruit when the weather is wet and cold at flowering, as it was this year. This is why I wouldn't recommend it as a variety for planting in the north of the country.

Madeleine Angevine often do better at setting a decent crop in adverse conditions but this year was obviously too challenging even for this hardy lady.

Moment Of Truth.

This years experiment is pot layering a vine with the aim of getting a strong plant quickly that will come into bearing fruit far earlier than traditional hardwood cuttings.

Here it is still joined to the mother vine.......

And here is the moment of truth, the moment it begins (or fails to begin) an independent life of its own.

By separating the layer from the host plant now forces the layer to grow more of its own roots while relieving the mother vine from the job of supporting the layer so it can concentrate on ripening the crop it carries.


The victorian gardeners who perfected this method of propagation would let the layer bear grapes this year thus producing a fully fruiting potted vine in a single season.

Hanging Out With The Grapes.

As the berries get bigger they get heavier. Eventually their sheer weight causes the bunches to hang down so they begin to look more like proper bunches of grapes.

These Phoenix bunches are coming along nicely.

And the smaller clusters of Chardonnay are showing promise too.

We should begin to see the first signs of ripening over the next couple of weeks.

Rooting Cuttings - Indoors Or Outdoors.

So what is better rooting cuttings under cover (in this case a polytunel) or in the open?

Compare Auguste Louise......

Solaris....

And Glenora.... All rooted under cover.

With these Regent cuttings rooted outside.

The indoor cuttings are so much further forward. So much so a number of them may come into bearing a year or two earlier than outdoor rooted ones.

However I wouldn't recommend trying to root cuttings in pots because I tried that last year with only limited success. Better to plant them in the ground for rooting.

Strong Growth - Pinot Noir.

Imagine a Pinot Noir that can grow from this......

To this.....

With a stem as thick as this!

Such strong growth means a few bunches will be allowed to form on it next year. It is now set up as a healthy vigorous vine.

A little delving leads me to the conclusion that this plant is not the classic Pinot Noir but an early ripening form - Pinot Noir Precoce (early Pinot Noir) or Fruhburgunder as it is called in germany. Pinot Noir Precoce is widely planted in many of britain's commercial vineyards because it is a more reliable ripener than Pinot Noir.

Good Looking Crop.

Phoenix has set a really good crop this year. Just look at all those bunches.

I may still remove a small number of bunches more to adjust crop load, something that will have minimal effect on yield as the remaining grapes will grow slightly larger to compensate.

While I'm in admiring mood these Interlaken cuttings in the polytunnel are heading for the roof. It certainly makes a difference raising them under cover.

As long as I can extract them without breaking their roots when transplanting them in the autumn they should have gained a year over outdoor cuttings to produce fruiting wood next year.

Summer Leaf Pulling.

After shoot and cluster thinning  the other main summer manipulation is leaf pulling. This is removing leaves around the grape cluster opening up the canopy, exposing the forming grape clusters to the light.

Doing this helps with even ripening as well as increasing the sugar content of the grapes once they colour up. It can also help increase grape size in some varieties (Dornfelder is one that responds well to leaf pulling by increased berry size) as well helping against botrytis near to harvest.

Here is the Brant vine before leaf pulling.

And this after leaf pulling. Leaves shading the clusters have been removed opening us the dense canopy exposing the developing grape clusters.

Here is a closer view of part of the canopy before.......

And the same part after.

As with cluster thinning leaf pulling for size needs to be completed before the grapes begin to colour up.

Crop Evaluation - Cluster Thinning.

Despite the cool wet weather the Phoenix has set a pretty decent crop. So now it is time to evaluate the potential crop load and reduce the number of clusters. There are three reasons for doing this.

1. To prevent the vine overbearing as well as allowing the remaining grapes to ripen better.

2 To increase berry size. Many, though not all, varieties will produce larger grapes if the number of clusters are reduced but only if this is done before the grapes begin to colour up.

3. To increase air flow around the bunches helping to prevent botrytis (grey mould) near harvest.

Of course the question is which clusters do you remove and which ones do you keep.

This stem has produced three clusters so the top one will be removed. If you are growing for eating then leave only one, the best, cluster on each stem.

Late forming clusters can also be removed so you get a more even harvest, something particularly important if the grapes are for winemaking.

More clusters will be removed gradually over the next three weeks until the planned number remain. Malformed or poorly formed clusters will be given priority for culling.

As you can see Phoenix is a variety that reliably produces large, attractive clusters with medium sized grapes that are good for wine as well as tasty when eaten fresh. This is why I often suggest it as a dual purpose trouble free variety.

Mixed Fruit Set.

After flowering comes fruit set. This is the time to begin evaluating how well the bunches have set in order to estimate yield.

Each individual immature grape has up to four seeds contained within it. Depending on how many of those seeds are pollinated will determine the eventual size of the berry. The more seeds that are pollinated the larger the grape will be.

This is the reason most seedless grapes naturally carry small berries within the bunch and commercial manipulations to increase berry size need to be performed for retail sales.

When the weather is cool and showery, as they have been this year, often grape clusters will set many different berry sizes with the smallest ones never ripening at all. The french call this "millerandage" while in english uneven fruit set is sometimes called "hen and chickens".

Here is a grape cluster showing typical signs of uneven fruit set.

Compared to this one which is much more evenly set. It should produce a decent bunch eventually.

Likewise this Chardonnay bunch looks reasonably well set. Chardonnay naturally grows a large amount of small bunches.