Wednesday, May 28, 2014

Grape Notes

To help understand how my Concord grapes grow (so that I can prune them effectively) we have been taking periodic photographs of one little spur. This is part of last year's new growth and will produce the grapes for this year.

On May 3rd there were three buds on this spur, the middle one facing toward the camera.
 On May 11th the left and middle buds have enlarged somewhat but there seems little change on the right bud.
 By May 19th the new spurs were lengthening and it is clear that what I thought was the right most bud was not a bud. The actual bud in that location is just beginning and is growing up, not down.
By May 25th growth has continued and it is not clear how many nodes are forming on each of the three spurs. Something is eating holes in the leaves. Inspection just now (May 28th) shows that this spur is not a great specimen. What bunches there are seem to have only a few future grapes per bunch, and this spur has been eaten more than the others that I looked at today. I pruned away other growth that has moved into the photo area.

I have also noticed that there are buds on some of the older growth and I tagged them with orange tape so that I can see what they become.
On one of what I think is a 3rd year vine (this now being the 5th year) there are two buds in the axils where last year's new growth comes off and one bud that is not in an axil. I also marked four other buds at various locations on old growth, some of which seems to be 2nd year wood. Now at least I know that new growth is not all on last year's growth. Apparently if you severely pruned an old vine, perhaps even removing all of the prior year's growth, the vine would send out new growth somewhere.