Delay Pruning Grapes Until it Hurts to Look at Them

This is a grape spur. When new growth is nearly about to happen it can be recut even shorter to only one bud or shoot if you know what you are doing. Nearly all wine grapes are spur pruned like this or shorter. Many table grapes like Thompson produce better if this spur is cut longer to include about 8 or ten buds. This type of long spur is called a "cane". Grapes "weep" or bleed when cut just before new growth. This is normal and nothing to worry about. This will stop when new growth starts.

            Delay pruning your grapevines a little bit longer. You can cut them back now but hold off on their final pruning length until after March 1. The idea is to delay the final pruning of grapes as long as possible before new growth begins. This helps reduce disease problems from developing on the grape bunches later. If there is wet or rainy weather in the next few weeks, the grapevines may have disease develop in your bunches of grapes even though everything appears normal. That’s what happened last year.

            To cut them back, identify the growth on your vines that occurred last year. This growth will be a different color than other vine growth. Sanitize and sharpen pruning shears before  cutting back any grapevine growth. If you don’t sanitize your pruners, you might spread a disease from cut to cut. Right now, cut this new growth now to about 18 inches long. But this is not the final cut.

            Cutting back this long growth helps you to see where to make the final cuts around the first week of March. You will perform these final cuts after March 1. You will see buds swelling on the grapes now but don’t get nervous. These buds will show some swelling and whiteness a couple of weeks before you must prune.

            The final pruning cuts on grapes depends on the kind of grape that you have. Some new growth is cut back very short for spur pruning while others are cut longer if cane pruning grapes; usually 8 to 10 inches long. Thompson Seedless for instance is normally cane pruned leaving 8 to 10 inches of new growth while the new growth of most wine grapes are spur pruned (very short).