It's early March, which means time for pruning! I just completed the pruning on all three vines vines and I'm really looking forward to this year. This is the first year I plan on leaving a full crop load on my 4th year Concord, and I'm expecting to leave a little fruit on the seedless Concord.
The first year Concord was really easy to prune. It made the top wire, but not by much. I cut off some of the smaller shoots from the top and left 5 buds near the top of the growing trunk. I will use 2 for one side of the vine, 2 for the other, and 1 for a renewal spur.
The seedless Concord was pretty easy to prune as well. There were a lot of laterals, which made for some decent cuttings. (I'll talk about cuttings a little later). I left 8 buds on the left cane, and 12 buds on the right cane, along with one bud at the 'fork' of the canes just for good measure. (For a total of 21 buds). I'll probably leave about one grape cluster alternating shoots because of how vigorous it was last season. I might be able to get a little crop out of it this second year (which is little bit of a risk considering most vines shouldn't crop until the third year).
The fourth year Concord was a pain to prune. There were shoots going everywhere from last seasons growth, along with the year before it. I didn't know how to set up cane pruning the previous years that well, so it was kind of a mess when I tried to basically spur prune it. This led to uneven growth, along with some overcropping. This year, I left one cane on the left side with 13 buds (I picked off some of the buds because they were too close together). The right cane extends from the growth from two years ago from the right side and reaches towards the middle of the plant. There were no canes extending from the trunk for a cane to the right, so I just selected this one. It has 10 buds, and extends about six inches past the trunk. I expect to leave all clusters this year for a full fruit load. I'm so excited.
I'll post some more about the seedless Concord cuttings I am propagating the next post, along with how I did it.
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