Permies Poll: How do you prune your grapes?

What is your preferred style of pruning? Do you prune at all?

Comment if I missed an option and I will make sure to add it!

I'm incredibly new to grape growing. I got some clearance grapes from a big box store that looked close to death and somehow got two of them to thrive.

There is a LOT of literature about grape pruning that is a bit intimidating to get my head wrapped around but I'm slowly figuring out all the parts and pieces.

Don't prune. Just let them take over the chain link fence.

With the varieties that grow well here, pretty much any system works great, as long as I remove 90% of last year's growth.

I live in a wine growing valley in Spain, and here the farmers prune hard, and the dormant plants all look like spooky hands emerging from the ground in rows.

I was going to follow them, but then I read Restoration Agriculture, with the grapevine story, and decided no prune is my way.  

My grapes are climbing fences, pergolas and obelisks, and only get pruned if there are branches or twigs obstructing my path.

The after pruning image is still showing too much material left on the vine. Trim each shoot back to two buds beyond the basal bud, which is right at the junction. There are several pruning techniques for unusual varieties but the general rule is leave shoots about a fist apart or slightly more for wine grapes and double that for table grapes. Almost all the fruit should be on the lower wire and the top wire for foliage- most of which is removed each year. You can fruit on two wires but the top wire will eventually be producing most of the fruit and the vines will be getting tall and harder to manage. Making the vines wsork too hard also shortens the number of years before they need a drastic cut back and a fresh start or replacement. I always liked to have the fruiting wire at about three feet six above ground- easy access underneath for farm work and for sheep to move through over winter.

I hadn't realised that there were different ways that vines respond to pruning! I call my system a 'cordon' system - just prune all side shoots back to a single trunk (usually an overhead branch :) ) New shoots form from that which generally seem to flower consistently - so it seems to work and is simple.
Not pruning for me would end up 1) with a tangled mess and 2) with too much foliage shading out the fruit so I don't think they would ripen. One of my vines is borderline here anyway, even in the polytunnel

My puppy pruned my concord grapevine inadvertently by grabbing branches and trying to run off with them. I had a bumper crop in ‘24, for the first time ever. Am hoping for a repeat next summer, but will have to see how it fares after my pup’s shenanigans.

This is a no brainer. All you need is a spare $150,000.00 for the pruner and about $35,000.00 for a tractor. With these, you can have your 15 feet of vineyard done in something more than a few seconds.

I used to think that grapes had to be pruned when dormant.  I, too, grow Concords on a chain link fence that surrounds the pool.  It was always a pain in the butt to go out and do the job when all of the vine was dried out and stiff.  One year, I didn't get to it, and then, come summer, the plant got huge, so I clipped back every branch that didn't have fruit on it, or back to where the fruit was on others.  This is the only way I prune it now.  First off, the debris is so much softer, and I can haul it all away in one or two cartloads without fighting the unruly lengths.  The vines are well over 30 years old now and going strong.  Earlier tonight, I was enjoying a glass of grape juice that I had steam juiced and then canned from this year's fruit.  I have not found a downside to pruning this way.  The vine had never been pruned in its first number of years, so I couldn't figure out how to go back and get order from chaos.  Now, I just hack back those long tendrils that add shade to the rest and don't have fruit.

That's so funny! I prune my grapes exactly like I prune my roses which is to say, I prune them to within an inch of their lives.  I don't know what else to do, I can't seem to train them.  When I bought my home, I inherited an out of control Concord grape on the side of the garage that I didn't even know was a grape. I cut it down to the ground because it was lifting the siding off. It came back so hard and threw tons of grapes at me the next year!  I brought home 2 Table Grape plants from the feed store that were almost dead. They consistently produce dozens of bunches every year. I dug up (from someone else) 4 Pinot grape plants and pruned them back to a stick before planting them. They stretch along a 40 foot wire support and give me so many little bunches that the wire can't hold them and I have to dig through the grass to find them.

All that being said, I don't like that I can't figure out how to keep them looking like winery rows, neat and tidy. I really need someone to come here and show me, cut for cut, what to do!

Gina standard practice is to cut back to a series of two bud spurs along the wire, spaced about four inches apart for wine grapes, eight inches for table grapes. Every few years, depending a lot on variety, it may be necessary to go in hard with loppers or even a saw and remove some of the gnarly looking clusters that develop. You may get a reduced yield the following year but the vines are better for it. Vineyard vines also have all the little dead sticks and tendrils and anything else that looks untidy removed. All foliage canes above the fruiting wire are usually removed, although you can run two extra canes from near the centre at pruning time and use them as fruiting canes. The two are cut off and replaced with fresh canes each year. It does increase yield but it's a big strain on vines. I used to get paid a sizeable production bonus each year if harvest was substantially larger than the previous year. My sauvignon blanc vines produced up to eleven and a quarter tons per acre and chardonnay almost nine tons. These days they want small tonnage but more intense flavours- but still insist on paying producers by the ton, even while expecting them to greatly reduce tonnage. My grape vines are absolutely loaded this year- it'll be many weeks  
though before they start to ripen.
Almost 7pm- chores to do. It's cooling down and the bloody cicadas have finally decided to quieten down. Five hours to midnight- nine tons of fireworks on Sydney Harbour tonight but I'll be asleep long before that. Happy New Year in advance
By the way, Gina Jeffries is a popular country singer down here in Oz. She's released nine albums and is also a breakfast radio DJ.

In a cold climate (Mongolia) we need to keep the entire vine compact and close to the ground as we have to cover them for the winter. So I find that spur pruning is best suited for our situation. Concord, Amurensis, Riparia and Valiant/C-16 do well with this method.

This thread helped me quite a bit, thank you all for your participation. I took my time and trimmed up my two grape plants to focus on a few main 'trunks' and hopefully see some rapid growth this year.

It's March 1st- the first day of autumn down here. My grape vines are loaded but it's a hundred degrees again today and some of the fruit is beginning to ferment even though it isn't quite ripe yet. Not looking promising. But- we have kept friends, neighbours and family supplied with lots and lots of melons and pumpkins and I've harvested huge amounts of honey, including fifty one pounds from a hive that took up residence in the wall of the house a few months ago.  Summer was nice, but please God, make it stop now.  

Last vote in apple poll was on February 28, 2025