Grapevine

[Sonja]

Hi, we have been lucky enough to get our hands on some mature Shiraz grapevines. Approx 10 years old. The only problem is the main stem/trunk is too tall for where we want to put them. Does anyone know if we can cut the trunk down to approx 600mm off the ground? Will new branches/stalks grow still off the trunk?

 

[nao57]

Most plants that fruit or produce vegetables, if you prune too much then they won't produce that year. So I don't recommend you do that. You want to avoid messing with the trunk also because that affects the plants ability to shield itself from heat and dehydration. You also don't want to prune down to only the trunk also.

With orchard plants and trees; they say if you prune over about 25 to 30% that it will go into shock and not produce that year. Now bear in mind that's a variable figure that's not exact to all plants. We generally let our grape vine plant do what it wants and it always produces. We don't prune much. But its NOT the breed of vine that yours is.

I have seen with apple trees, peach trees, cherry trees, and plum trees that this amount that you prune off, or the limit to how much you can take off without it going into shock DOES hold true for most every fruit tree. I also reason that this holds true to other things like vines.

Its also my opinion that the economy and the agriculture in this country are troubled. So you want to get everything you can and store it away and preserve it.

So I don't recommend you take too much off the plant.

It sounds like you are also transplanting them also? If that's the case, you already have a lot of stress going on. I would try be very careful about smoothing out the transition of a transplant. Transplanting you want to keep them wet the first week, especially during the hot part of the day. You can heat shield the base of the plant also. And then just slowly get them used to a normal watering routine.

 

[Anniekay]

I would try planting it at an angle of about 45 degrees from vertical. That should bring down the height and you wouldn't have to cut it.

Sounds like it had been growing on an arbor for it to grow that tall. Or, you could just grow it over an arbor if you have one or want to build one.

 

[Oliver Buckle]

Had a grapevine in the greenhouse the previous owner had ignored, it filled the roof of the greenhouse, hardly produced anything, and shaded anything else I wanted to grow. I chopped it off about two feet from the ground in mid winter. It bled clear liquid in large quantities for some time and I thought I had killed it, however it came back next Spring from several places on the bare stump, and the following year was laden with fruit. I kept it to a reasonable height, but it was still a big bully of a plant, and the grapes were all pretty small, this is England. I used some bits from the trunk as wood to bury under a bed I was constructing, and sprouts from them are starting to appear on the surface. It doesn't seem to die easily, but that may just be the one I inherited.

 

[Oliver Buckle]

Thinking about it, just to add, my approach to such things is to try different possibilities, not all the same, then if something doesn't work you have only lost that one.

 

[Sonja]

Thanks for the replies and advice. We might be able to keep around 1m of the trunk and branches if there is a way to make new branches come out of the lower old trunk?
We can have a total height of around 1100mm.
We don’t mind if it takes a year or so
For new fruit to appear. It’s worth that to have some really old vines