Backyard Pruning: Tips from the Pros

Maintaining a vineyard is year-round work. As winter turns to spring, the biggest chore is pruning the vines, though there are other preparations for a fruitful growing season to consider as well. Two amateur winemakers who have won numerous awards from their estate-grown grapes share how they prepare for budbreak.

Ken Stafford has won numerous awards with his estate wines grown in Plymouth, California.

Pruning activities and vineyard readiness for budbreak actually start right after harvest. Overwintering diseases need to be considered and work after harvest should occur to minimize disease. Leaving bad/damaged clusters on the vine can become a habitat for disease that will impact the next growing season. If you have a small vineyard and do not have the ability to disk the soil between vine rows then I would recommend you find a way to remove any “bad” primary clusters left on the vine and transport them to a compost area.

If you have the ability to disk or till your vineyard, then bad clusters can be removed when picking and dropped into vineyard rows. After harvest is completed I also do a walkthrough and drop any remaining primary clusters into the vineyard row. Also, do not drop the bad clusters under the vine canopy. Vineyard rows are then disked soon after harvest. 

Once vines reach their dormant phase, pruning is used to control their size and shape and maintain the balance between fruit and shoot growth so fruit production and wine quality are optimized. Keep in mind that:

Vines with too light of a crop load put energy into green growth and may exhibit vegetative characters in the fruit and wine produced.

Vines with too heavy of a crop load in relation to green growth may not be able to fully ripen all clusters.

A large cane, spur, arm or vine can produce more than a small one and therefore should carry more fruit.

Early pruning in wet winter climates exposes the vines to greater risk of infection to wood canker diseases (e.g., Eutypa dieback). Don’t base the timing of your pruning activity on what a commercial vineyard might be doing. Their pruning is often based on labor availability, not vineyard health. For the home grower, pruning can be more ideally delayed to late spring when disease is less of a problem.

I don’t prune until I see buds swelling and beginning to leaf out at the far tips of the canes. Timing is also driven by spring frosts. Late pruning not only minimizes disease, but causes the vines to delay budbreak, which is hopefully past the last freeze. This may delay harvest but that is a better option for our vineyard.

Our vines are head trained or VSP trellis with spur pruning. To make the pruning operation efficient our crew of helpers (mostly my wife, Leah) removes 90% of last year’s growth, leaving about 6 inches (18 cm) of cane on the vine. I trail the crew, making final spur selections with the desired number of buds at that position and cutting out the remaining 6-inch (18-cm) canes. The number of spurs on the vine, their location on an arm or cordon, and number of buds left on the spur are based upon the vigor of the vine and cluster-to-green growth ratio to create a balanced vine.

In the past we used a cart and wagon to toss canes into and then moved them to an area to be burned later on for disease prevention. We now toss the cut canes into the middle of the vineyard row and I come back with a flail mower, which cuts them up and allows them to decompose into the soil. We’ve cut our crew size and work effort in half by not having to transport canes out of the vineyard.

Steve and Sylvia Kott have won many awards for their estate wines grown in Auburn, New York.

Work in the vineyard for us doesn’t start until late February, early March. The winters here in Central New York can be very cold and snowy and it’s not unusual to get a major snowfall in March, so we try to wait until conditions are a little more conducive to working outdoors. Vines are trimmed back in the fall after the grapes are picked, but now probably is the most important and biggest job in the vineyard — pruning. We started with no prior experience in pruning, but with the help of articles, YouTube videos, and some on-the-job training, we became proficient to prune as amateurs. Our advice to those new to pruning is don’t be afraid to start. There is plenty of information out there to assist you. 

The vineyard is a little over a half-acre of downward sloping land overlooking Owasco Lake. There are approximately 250 vines of which there are eight varieties growing on a two-wire trellis. Dealing with eight varieties has been a great opportunity, however, since many ripen at different times it makes for a long growing and winemaking season. 

In preparation for pruning, be sure to have good, sharp hand pruners, loppers for larger cuts, safety glasses, thin work gloves, and your choice of a tying material, if needed. Many of our vines also need to be repositioned and some rehung. We have found that working together on each vine, assisting with retying, and discussing some cuttings helps us move along. With retying, we use jute, which is biodegradable and has a tendency to break as vines thicken, thus lessening damage to vines. Vines are cleaned up and canes are cut down to two buds. 

This is also a good time to check your trellising system. This past spring we had a few end and inner posts that needed replacing. Occasionally we’ll lose a vine or two after the winter. Normally we leave those alone at this point in the season. Some produce new shoots from the base and the growing process starts again, while others need replacing down the line.