Training a young grape vine: remove lateral shoots
Monday, July 30th, 2007 at
5:27 pm
Hello grape growers!
Do you know why and how you should remove lateral shoots on a young vine?
No? Okay, then this post will help you allot.
Why do you need to remove lateral shoots?
When you look at the picture below, you will notice the vine looks like a shrub with one shoot that is noticeably stronger than the rest. This is the shoot you will want to train to reach the trellis wire. Now, in order to grow this shoot (training shoot) as fast as possible, you will have to somehow channel all available energy to that shoot.
To do just that, you will have to remove all other growing points that compete for nutrients on the grape vine. In the picture below, you will see how I have removed all lateral shoots from this vine and left only the strongest, best developed shoot.
If you do this the correct way, your vine will soon look something like the following picture.
This is an ongoing process during the first year of training your grape vine and should be done weekly.
Have a grape (great) day my friends!
Danie
Tagged with: how to grow grapes
Filed under: growing grapes • how to grow grapes
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Hi Danie
I have finally got a bumper crop of clusters as I call them from my three years of labor. It’s vines are wrapped around my porch cornerpost wich is a large stucco 12″x12″ diametr post and it’s completely covered. I have probably 75-100 clusters of various sizes. I’m excited….. But…They seem to be staying about the size of a small pea. They have been that size for over two months now and don’t seem to be growing. The birds are getting to many of them and i keep cuting any new runners off.
My question is, do i just keep waiting or do I have too much growth taking away nutrients from all the clusters as a whole?
Please help, I feel I’m so close to a victory but really not sure what to do. I feel like I should cut out the smaller ones and let the larger clusters have all the food but don’t want to do anything that I don’t need to do.
Thanks
Jeff and Leslea
leslear@yahoo.com
Hallo Ralph.
Certainly you can remove laterals from chardonnay. Just make sure you are not removing laterals in the area where you want to make the cordons (arms) of your grape vine. Removing laterals from the stem of the grape vine, will for sure make it grow faster and reach the trellis wire earlier.
Danie
http://www.my-grape-vine.com
Just wondering if removing of laterals from new Chardonnay grapes can be done now in the summer ?