How To Prune

Indoor and Outdoor

Grape Vines

Pruning an indoor vine is really an uncomplicated affair, unlike what may have built up in your mind as you contemplated the perplexities of pruning, led on by all the information overload there is surrounding us all.

My pruning method is very straight forward, in that I have what appears to be, in the winter-time, a single length of rope attached to the side and roof of my greenhouse.

This is because in its first year I allowed the grape vine to grow until it reached its natural length, hacked it back to 2/3rds its length, removed any side growths in the winter, and the following spring allowed it to grow in its length again. This was repeated for four years and then I stopped it in its tracks.

This forced any new growth, laterals that produce each year’s fruit, to push out from this main stem to bear fruit (although it did this when it reached three years old).

These fruit-bearing laterals were pinched out at a leaf beyond the first bunch of grapes, or at four leaves out from the stem if no fruit was showing (as odd ones do), that way limiting the amount of stem/leaf growth and causing the vine to put its energies into producing larger grapes, although I also limited the number of bunches that I allowed to grow, that way giving my vines a better chance of staying healthy.

So at present, just after leaf-fall, I have what appears to be a length of rope with lots of twigs attached along its length (this years new growth), along with a further stem, pinched off at 1ft (30cm) at the tip of the ‘main stem’.

What I do between the new-year and the end of January, as that time is when the plant is at its deepest rest, is simply remove all of this year’s growth back to the ‘rope’, that way retaining the shape I had after my last winter’s pruning session.

I crop them close to the joint they emerged from, unlike most pundits recommend in their journals with “you must leave two or three buds showing on each lateral to produce new fruit the following year”.

It’s all hogwash! You don’t need to do that at all!

I don’t, and my greenhouse vines (I’ve got three in there) have produced fruit readily for the last twelve years or more (and my out-door ones too, although they are not looking like a single ‘rope’, but more like fans trapped between three heights of two wires (stapled to either side of the six, four-inch diameter support posts, (that’s three in a line about 15 feet apart, by two rows) with twigs attached randomly (this years fruit bearing laterals) hanging out in all directions, and will soon look like the basic fans again once they have this years growth removed.

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If you have a vine that is overgrown, you have to be hard with it. Don't be afraid of hurting it, just cut back hard on some – if not most – of the thinner, newer growth, otherwise you will get very little fruit, if any at all, in years to come.

Simply cut it into the shape you want it, not as nature wants it – it’s own inclination is to replace the growth you remove and at the same time spread everywhere, so you will not do any damage to it, providing you do not cut it below a few feet above the ground through the main stem.

Controlling your grape vine is the key to producing grapes.

Exactly the same applies to indoor and outdoor grape vines!

To learn more thoroughly how to care for your vines, why not check out my books below.

                George