Budswell for me occurred last year on April 10, and March 30 for others around my area. Although it's better to prune very near your budswell date, I feel that pruning a little sooner, like March 1 will be fine. The very cold temperatures from winter will be mostly over by then, and I will be around anyway if a late frost hits my vines. So, there's no need to delay budbreak by any reasonable time from late pruning. Therefore, it's only about 2 weeks until pruning time.
I checked out the vines today, and they seem to be doing just fine, with minimal winter damage if any at all.
I found that the seedless concord that will be entering its second year has two great canes to allow growth. In fact, one of the canes looks large and vigorous enough to allow for a very small crop this year (maybe about one cluster for some of the shoots). The other cane is quite smaller so I don't think I will fruit much at all on that shoot. There are quite a number of lateral shoots coming from the trunk that will be cut off (about 8, one of which is about 6 feet long!). Three of these laterals may be thick enough to allow for some seedless concord propagation. I plan on showing my progress throughout the propagation. I will be able to get about 6 to 8 cuttings to try and root. Overall, I will have about 21 main buds to allow growth from this season, as well as a few from the trunk to provide canes for fruit next year.
The regular concord that will be entering its second year has not made as much growth as the seedless. It made the top wire, but did not have any laterals which is also a sign of less vigor. However, any vine that makes it to the top wire its first year is still far beyond expectations. I will leave 4 buds near the wire to produce canes this year. I will not leave any crop due to its low vigor, and wait until its third year for crop.
The concord that will be entering its fourth year and is quite large with many shoots coming out of the old canes. Picking the two new canes for this year was quite difficult as it was even hard to see which canes belonged to which part of the vine. I picked a waterspout shoot that was exposed to sunlight for one cane that has emerged from the trunk at trellis level. This cane has 8 regularly spaced buds, with 9 close spaced buds. I will pick off every other close spaced bud for a total of 13 buds. There are no other canes close to the trunk that I can select for fruit this year, so I picked a vigorous cane about 10 buds long that emerges from the far right side of last years growth and is bent and extends towards the trunk. This will allow a good filling of canopy space. These two canes will give me about 23 fruiting buds which is slightly under what I wanted, but I probably overcropped last year so I want to leave fewer buds anyway.
