It’s that time of year again when winter pruning is carried out. Last year I had to cut all the vines right back as the growth wasn’t strong enough, but this year I have the exciting job of bending the canes down onto the lowest wire and choosing how many buds to allow to grow into this year’s shoots which should carry fruit.
I took each vine in turn and cut it back so that when bent down onto the wire there were five buds in total in a good position (pointing upwards) – one of which will be bent down onto the wire in the opposite direction next year to form a T shape on the wire. One of the Solaris vines seemed a bit weaker than the others so I cut it back to just four buds. I will also grow one extra shoot to replace the cane next year as it should be a bit more substantial than the current one. Apart from this one vine I have decided at the moment to go with spur training as it is so much simpler, but I will probably experiment with cane replacement pruning at some point in the future to see if there seem to be any benefits.
Here is how the vineyard looks now. Still a little sparse but when all the shoots start to go up this year it will really start to take shape as a mini vineyard.
Here is a close up of one of the vines bent down onto the wire. The following photo shows how the ends of the vines are tied onto the wire.
