Tuesday, September 8, 2009

Vines on the Wire



Cab franc, sans "underpants" (as Gilbert calls the plant protectors), tied to the wires after some late-summer pruning. Pruning is ordinarily not done in the fall, but was appropriate this year because I've just gotten the trellis wires up.
I emailed Jeff Cox, author of From Vines to Wines, and asked him about when & how to form the cordons, which will be the permanent horizontal trunks of the vine. He kindly responded and advised tying the main cane up now, trimming all lateral shoots, and then forming the cordon out of two new shoots next spring.
I mostly took Jeff's advice, but I have left a few laterals and some foliage on each plant on the theory that there are still several weeks of growing season til the first good frost and I might as well take advantage of all the photosynthesis I can get (for roots and cane) short of diverting excessive plant energy to useless parts of the vine. In other words, I can't bring myself to totally strip the plant naked yet. On several plants I actually did take a couple of likely-looking laterals and began to form the cordon, just for the fun of it.

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