Novice seeks advice on refreshing old vines
Posted: Sat Mar 31, 2018 11:01 am
We planted two Concord grape vines about 8 years ago, at our home on Cape Cod, Massachusetts. They grew up two pairs of posts to crosstrees and several lateral sticks approximately 7 feet off the ground. We pruned them most years, but I'm not at all sure that we did a decent job. They produced what seemed to us like quite a bit of grapes, but the grapes seemed fairly small and we didn't protect them from the birds, which ate most of them.
Recently a strong winter storm blew the whole thing down. The vines are now rather long, tangled, and difficult to 'put in order'. Please see photos below. Lilacs and forsythia are just budding, if that's helpful information.
This seems like an opportunity to 'start over' and get it right with well established plants while pruning and training them properly this time. I'd like to do whatever might result in healthy productive grapes, but would prefer to have the vines much lower than they were for ease of tending them. I'm basically wondering how severely I can prune them without harming them.
Recently a strong winter storm blew the whole thing down. The vines are now rather long, tangled, and difficult to 'put in order'. Please see photos below. Lilacs and forsythia are just budding, if that's helpful information.
This seems like an opportunity to 'start over' and get it right with well established plants while pruning and training them properly this time. I'd like to do whatever might result in healthy productive grapes, but would prefer to have the vines much lower than they were for ease of tending them. I'm basically wondering how severely I can prune them without harming them.