out of control grape vine-HELP

[tilerman]

4 years ago someone gave me a grapevine cutting which i literally just stuck in the ground not expecting much to be truthful. 4 years on and it is massive! This year we had grapes by the bucket load and what a lovely taste. Now the leaves have dropped i need to train it a bit and also untangle. My question is do i need to prune? Some branches seem very brittle and break easily so not sure what to do. The whole vine is a great big tangle but we really want to keep it because the fruit is so good and my (greek) wife uses the leaves to cook with. Any help would be appreciated. Thankyou in advance.

 

[JohnD]

You need to prune it to a nice shape. you mostly cut off the older stuff, except where yoiu want it for a framework, and you also cut off alll the tangles.

If you have it on a good wide fence or wires, you can cut the upright stem quite low, and lead two strong horizontals, that come out the stem about 18" above the ground, tied to wires, and lead them a good distance sideways. Mine are about 6 foot each side. Cut off all the other stuff. Come spring, each of these side branches will send out lots of upright shoots, which you tie to your wires, and the fruit will come off these.

If you have a narrower site, prune it to one vertical stem, and in spring it will send out lots of shoots, which you tie to the wires, going horizontally. The fruits will come on these shoots.

Each year you cut off most of the shoots and go back to the skeleton.

That's a bit of a summary, much more on http://apps.rhs.org.uk/advicesearch/profile.aspx?pid=284

For some reason they havern't got a simple sketch diagram showing the two different shapes you can use but there must be one somewhere

I think this one explains it well http://www.ehow.com/how_172725_prune-grape-vine.html except that he says the fruit comes off one-year-old wood, but I could haver sworn that mine comes off in late summer the new growth from the shoots that came out this spring

 

[tilerman]

Thankyou so much for your help and the attached links. I definately need to put some posts in the ground so thats my weekend job and it seems its the right time of year to do some major pruning. Already looking forward to next years crop! Thanks again.

 

[roberta1000]

I could haver sworn that mine comes off in late summer the new growth from the shoots that came out this spring

Yes of course it does - vines flower and fruit on the current year's wood. Prune off everything that sticks out of the basic framework about this time of year.

There's not a lot to growing a vine in my limited experience. Since I didn't want to allocate the whole greenhouse to one I grew 2 leaders with 2 laterals at different heights to make a sort of cordon - fruits just fine.