Our pruning season starts in late December with what we call Winter Pruning. We use a battery hedge trimmer to cut all the dormant canes in two places: just below the top wire and 12-18 inches above the cordon wire. We remove and shred all the canes as we go and build a compost pile along with the mulched leaves we collected at the onset of dormancy. Since we wrap the shoots on the top wire during the growing season it takes a little extra time to pull them off but we find the advantages are worth it for our vines.
Winter Pruning removes the majority of the wood from last season and allows us to see the vine’s structure for the next stage: Decision Pruning. In Decision Pruning we look at each vine to see how many strong shoots it produced last season which tells us how many buds to leave for the next season. For spur pruned varieties we select spurs with good spacing and adequate diameter and remove the rest of the growth. For cane pruned varieties we select canes to lay down and renewal spurs. The goal is to leave a balanced vine with the right amount of buds which will produce the correct amount of shoots to ripen its fruit – think of Goldilocks: not too many, not too few, just right. Tune in this summer to see if we accomplished our goal!
