I know you probably can’t tell from the pictures….but this is a very exciting moment! Most of the vines are around 3.5’ tall……however some of them are 6’ tall. Since this is the second year, we are establishing a better root structure and also preparing the canes to bear fruit in 2012. So…..when the vine is around 4.5-5’ tall I’m cutting it back to 3’….as long as the trunk is #2 pencil thick. Yes, very technical. What this will do is shock the plant so that it will concentrate its growth to put out lateral growth. In addition it will grow a good root structure. Then in the fall I will do more pruning. Since our fruit wire is 36” tall, we will cut the trunk back to 30” to allow the canes room to grow to the fruit wire. We will also take off the leaves below the drip line…and then it will look like a grapevine. This will all take place in the winter while the plant is sleeping.

With this work……we should get around 0.5-1 ton of fruit next year….enough for 25-50 cases of Pinot noir. I’m sure all you readers are excited about drinking the fruit of my labor!!

Below are pictures before and after the pruning. You can see it started out around 5.5’ and ended at 3’ tall.