The grape vine in my greenhouse has gone mad this year there are tiny bunches of grapes coming, how do I manage them? I know how to thin the bunches.
Do I cut the cane a couple of leaves after the bunch? as there is about three feet of cane after the bunch, any advice gratefully received, the vine is an old one, trained on wires at he top of the green house twelve feet long
Maybe I should have posted in greenhouse section, Sorry!
Prune laterals (side shoots) 2 leaves past the flowers and non flowering laterals after 5 leaves. Hope this helps
The same is happening here. I pinch off after one leaf after any little bunch of grape flowers. It is pruning with finger and thumb and at the moment it is a daily task.
The 'rule of three' applies to vines. One stem in the first year, off which foundation training branches develop in the second year. Usually one of these branches is selected and trained up and along the roof of a greenhouse, the other branches arising from the first year stem are cut off.
The second-year branch going along the roof of your greenhouse (or however you have trained your vine) produces lots of further branches in the third year, which have the flowers and produce the grape bunches. These need a lot of pruning or they will go wild and fill a greenhouse in no time. These third year branches need to be kept short. As soon as you see where the flower is, finger and thumb prune beyond. It is ok to keep one or two leaves after the flower but no more and no second flowering bunch.
Hope this makes sense.
All advice very helpful, many thanks, rescued this vine thirty years ago from a building site.
Don't touch the actual cane! Only prune green shoots. You probably know that but some don't. The brown woody cane should only be pruned when it's dormant in Winter and then only when it's cold and getting colder.
Quote from: Stevens706 on June 08, 2010, 12:13:02
Prune laterals (side shoots) 2 leaves past the flowers and non flowering laterals after 5 leaves. Hope this helps
You can be a bit more brutal than this if there are a lot of non- fruiting shoots. My vines are strong and mature cordons so I rub the weak ones right off and take the strong ones back to one big leaf (the first little leaf often falls off).
If you want the vine tidy enough to put a net over in Autumn then you'll want to trim the laterals again - so getting rid of the weak ones saves a lot of work.
It all depends on how vigorous the vine is.
A really vigorous vine might have 2 or 3 bunches of flowers on 3 adjacent nodes at the same time. If you are keeping more than one then you can take the whole shoot off just past the last bunch.
Cheers.