[Community_garden] Pruning grapes. >

[J Hawkridge]

Steve,

At the Peralta Community Garden in Berkeley, CA (http:// 
www.alotincommon.com/) we have been growing native grapes for several  
years on an overhead arbor, basically just letting grow as they will.  
they produced a couple clusters of grapes here and there.
Two years ago, I did a sort of modified pollard on them, basically  
cutting everything back to two main stems (picture a tree with two  
trunks pollarded). That left me with a vine that branches into two  
main stems, with no smaller or newer growth. The vines came back very  
strongly the next season and produced many clusters of grapes. This  
past winter, I pruned mainly the smaller newer growth, but left many  
of the secondary branches,  and did a little shaping and directional  
pruning. This summer we had a bumper crop of grapes and were able to  
make lots of juice and jelly from them (not too easy a task  
considering the small size of the native California grapes).

Can't say this work for your or other situations, but it did for us.  
I basically followed my intuition and trimmed the way I see  
commercial vines being trimmed (a modified pollard and/or removal of  
younger, smaller branches).

Good luck!

John Hawkridge

> From: Steven Garrett <geografood at yahoo.com>
> Date: December 3, 2007 9:20:13 AM PST
> To: community_garden at list.communitygarden.org
> Subject: [Community_garden] Pruning grapes. Was: Questions on urban  
> orchard and garden at college
> Reply-To: Steven Garrett <sgarrett at u.washington.edu>
>
>
> Hi all,
> My local Extension office can't help me on this one, so I turn to  
> the real experts in growing food for domestic use. All the  
> information that I can find on pruning grapes is for trellised,  
> wine grapes. Like many fresh eating grape growers, I grow mine on  
> an overhead arbor to save space and/or to provide shade. Since my  
> arbor is on the north side of my garden, I can raise food in the  
> raised bed underneath.
>
> Any tips on pruning this beast?
> Steven
>
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