Vintage 2019: Spring

Earlier in late March, I blogged about Vintage 2019: Pruning Time. We are very slowly coming to the end of pruning but face a few days of rain that will keep us out of the vineyard. What we have learned in the process of pruning is that we can actually begin this process in the dead of winter. (Brrr)
Our vineyard row is nearly 800 feet long with approximately 180-190 vines planted in each row. Currently, we can take up to 4 hours to prune one row of vines.
Each row of pruning that we do can be divided into 4 separate tasks:

• Cutting tendrils from the trellis wires
• Cutting the tops of the canes
• Cutting the one year old canes from the two year old guyot (the cane that was laid down on the fruiting wire)
• Determining which canes to leave for this year's growth

We quickly learned that we should cut the tendrils from the trellis wire as a separate task to facilitate the pruning task. Cutting the tendrils from one row of vines can take up to 1-1/2 hours if done by one person. Cutting the tops of the canes while not necessarily a time saver, can save on the amount of cuttings removed from the row during pruning, which we do with a tarp.

Just doing these two tasks in winter can save us time when it comes to pruning. One additional thing that we can do when we cut the tendrils and the tops of the canes is to move the netting so that it is not in the way when it comes to the final pruning.

Raising the netting should also facilitate our next task which is to lay the canes down on the fruiting wire. These are just some of the details we learned in our 6th year of pruning. Yes, we are slow learners.
So far, our buds still appear to be dormant so hopefully we have a few more days before budbreak commences.