Seasons in the Vineyard

After winter pruning begins

Delayed pruning simply means to delay the pruning of your grape vines in order to avoid frost damage. For example, many vineyards do the bulk of their pruning in the winter months because they have so many vines to prune. During pruning, they may take a cane that has 30 or more buds and prune in down to 10 or less. When daily temperatures begin to edge up past 50–60 °F (10–16 °C) for a week or more, this begins to trigger bud swell. If the cane is pruned to 10 buds, the buds out on the end of the cane will begin to swell first and grow. If green tissue appears and then a frost event happens, those buds can be damaged, affecting this year’s crop.

But, if that same cane is left at 30 buds, there are twenty buds that will want to break first. That way if a frost event happens, the damage will occur to buds that are going to be pruned off anyway. When the likelihood of frost decreases, those excess buds can be pruned, leaving the 10 healthy buds that will produce this year’s crop.