When is the Best Time to Prune Grapevines
This article summarizes the best time for pruning grapevines and related content about grapevine pruning techniques and timing. Next, the editor will introduce this to netizens.
Everyone knows that grapes are perennial vines that require蔓更新 and need to adjust the relationship between nutritional growth and reproductive growth to make the plant grow strong, maintain vigorous fruiting ability, extend the plant's lifespan and fruiting years, and achieve the goal of high yield and quality. Therefore, grapevines are suitable for pruning throughout the four seasons, especially during dormancy. Seasonal pruning includes spring bud thinning, summer shoot tip and lateral shoot treatment, autumn thinning of weak and useless branches, and solving the problem of canopy closure. Winter pruning has the highest volume, addressing issues such as蔓更新 and regulating tree strength and yield.
I. The Significance of Grapevine Pruning
Shaping and pruning are important measures in grape cultivation, which involve scientific induction of grapevines to regulate growth and fruiting, aging and updating, and establish a relatively balanced relationship. Reasonable pruning can lead to good growth, early fruiting, and high-quality fruit; it can extend the fruiting years of fruit trees and delay aging through rejuvenation.
Pruning regulates the flow of water and nutrients in fruit trees, enhancing physiological activity and transforming vegetative growth into reproductive growth. Pruning is not just a single action; it works in conjunction with other measures to promote local and overall physiological activity through branch retention. It strengthens the ability of roots to absorb nutrients and water, enhances conduction, maintains tree vigor, and ensures annual high yield.
Improving ventilation and light conditions, enhancing photosynthesis, and reducing disease occurrence. Pruning can change the direction of branches, remove excess branches, distribute new shoots evenly on the trellis, make full use of space, improve lighting conditions, and enhance photosynthetic efficiency. We must integrate various cultivation measures based on shaping and pruning to achieve our goals. During the pruning process, we should continuously learn, carefully observe the pruning response of fruit trees, and as the saying goes, "humility is in the trees," meaning we should carefully observe the response after pruning, learn from practice, and serve agricultural production better, change old concepts, establish new trends, and achieve innovation and progress.
II. The Functions of Grapevine Pruning
In the case of natural growth, grapes maintain a relatively stable balance, meaning there is a balance between above-ground and below-ground parts. After pruning, this balance is disrupted, causing changes between the above-ground parts and the roots, and between the whole and the parts, thus establishing a new balance. In grape management, any technical measure, such as fertilization and irrigation, is a process of changing the various parts of the fruit tree under the combined action of external environmental conditions, meaning a process of quantitative to qualitative transformation.
1. Pruning has a dual effect on fruit trees
The object of pruning is various useless branches, but its effect is not limited to the pruned branches themselves; it also affects the entire tree. From a local perspective, it may only be the removal of a branch, but from an overall perspective, it has an inhibitory effect on the growth of the entire tree and roots. This dual effect of promoting locally and inhibiting globally is the dual role of pruning. The local promotional effect of pruning is mainly due to the reduction in the number of buds after pruning, changing the original distribution of water and nutrients, and concentrating the supply of nutrients and water to the remaining branches and buds; at the same time, pruning improves ventilation and light conditions, enhancing photosynthetic efficiency and improving the nutritional level of the remaining buds.
2. Regulate yield, ensure high-quality and abundant production
Through pruning, the yield is determined. However, if the yield is too high and exceeds the tree's load-bearing capacity, it will affect both fruit quality and the differentiation of flower buds and the maturity of branches, which is not conducive to the next year's fruiting and growth.
3. Maintain a reasonable tree structure, keeping the tree forever vigorous
The purpose of shaping and pruning is to cultivate a reasonable tree structure, prune throughout the four seasons, adjust and maintain the tree, and ensure continuous vigor, annual high yield, and high-quality production.
III. Grapevine Pruning Throughout the Seasons
1. Pruning Time
In the past, due to insufficient mastery of grape pruning techniques, winter pruning was commonly used, neglecting seasonal pruning. Now, the old concept has been changed, and new pruning techniques are adopted, with pruning throughout the four seasons to solve problems of light and canopy closure. Reasonably control, save, use, supplement, consume, and achieve a balanced nutritional state for the tree.
(1) Spring pruning. Also known as the spring bud thinning method, removing multiple buds, weak buds, and suckers to save nutrients and supply them entirely to the remaining buds, commonly referred to as nutrient conservation.
(2) Summer pruning. Pinching the tips of fruiting and nutritional branches, lateral shoot treatment, pinching tendrils, and then fruit cluster shaping, including straightening clusters, thinning clusters, and thinning berries.
(3) Autumn pruning. The task in autumn is to pinch the tips of secondary shoots again, thinning dense branches, weak branches, and branches with low lignification, regulating the amount of branches and ensuring light reaches each branch to improve lighting conditions and enhance the transparency of the trellis.
(4) Winter pruning. Winter pruning has the highest pruning volume, removing the most branches, and is an effective method to determine the next year's yield.
2. Pruning Standards
They are determined based on variety characteristics, tree strength, tree age, trellis type, and yield. There are thinning pruning, short shoot pruning, medium shoot pruning, long shoot pruning, ultra-long shoot pruning, double branch renewal, and single branch renewal.
(1) Thinning method: It involves removing weak and useless branches.
(2) Short shoot pruning method: It involves pruning 2-3 buds, usually for newly planted young trees and involves flat pruning.
(3) Medium shoot pruning method: It involves pruning 3-5 buds, usually for filling empty spaces to increase branch and leaf mass.
(4) Long shoot and ultra-long shoot pruning (6-12 buds) are generally used for extending the main vines, such as on small trellises.
(5) Double branch renewal: It involves retaining 1-2 buds on each of the two branches from the previous year's pruning. However, double branch renewal requires space on the main vine; otherwise, the trellis becomes closed, and there is an increase in ineffective leaves, leading to nutritional consumption.
(6) Single branch renewal: It involves cutting one of the original double branches and retaining the other, then shortening the retained branch, known as single branch renewal.
(7) Major and minor updates: Major updates involve cutting the old vines from the base and retaining a suckering branch to cultivate into a fruiting mother vine. Minor updates involve replacing weaker branches with strong ones to keep the tree young and extend the fruiting period.
When is the Best Time to Prune Grapevines
IV. Grapevine Pruning Steps
Grapevine pruning steps can be summarized in four words: observe, thin, cut, extend, and retain.
1. Observe: Observe the variety characteristics, tree strength, and relationships between branches.
2. Thin: Remove suckers, weak branches, diseased branches, and useless branches.
3. Cut: Determine the appropriate amount of branches based on pruning standards and shorten the annual branches.
4. Extend: Extend the pruning of the grape main vine. The longest cannot exceed the second wire of the trellis, and the cut end should be about 0.8 cm thick.
5. Retain: Refers to the amount of buds retained. Traditional pruning methods retain 8-12 branches per square meter, with the most precise being 6-8 branches. "Less is more" means reducing the number of branches to concentrate nutrients on the remaining ones. Countries like the United States and Ukraine have learned pruning techniques from Japan, where, except for filling space, the rest are pruned to a single stick, using hidden buds for fruiting with high yield and quality, and better profits.
V. Pruning Time
Pruning is generally done one month after defoliation, when nutrients have returned to the tree. However, it is necessary to determine if the variety is resistant and can survive the winter. Varieties like Red Globe, Krissy, Gold Finger, and White Chicken Heart need to be buried in soil for winter protection, so pruning should be done earlier or with leaves, around the end of November or early December, and buried to prevent winter damage. Other varieties are pruned from December to January.
VI. Pruning Precautions
(1) The cut end should be smooth and free of burrs, with a diameter of 1-2 cm to prevent the drying of winter buds.
(2) Protect the wound with a wound protectant or white glue.
(3) Leave a short stub when thinning large branches to prevent frost damage and remove the stub the following year.
(4) Avoid opposite cuts to prevent tree damage and spring bleeding, which can weaken the tree.
The above is the full content about the best time to prune grapevines and grapevine pruning techniques and timing. I hope it can help you, and I also hope everyone will visit the Green Plant Enthusiast website for more green plant and flower experience and knowledge!