Cane Pruning Young Grapevines | Cane Pruning vs Spur Pruning | Thompson Grape

So it is the beginning of February, which means it is time to get those grapevines pruned. That's up next. Hello everyone, this is Duane with Edge of Nowhere Farm, and we're coming to you here at the beginning of February in 2024. Now, if you guys have been following us along, you know that we have over 180 fruiting trees, vines, and shrubs here on this desert farm. And today we're going to be showing you how we cane prune a couple of our grapevine varieties. So before we get started, I want to go over the tools that I'm going to be using today. The first tool is my Corona pruners. Now, this actual pair of pruners I've been using for probably the last five or six years. Still going strong. They're forged. It's a bypass pruner, which simply means the blade bypasses the anvil when you're cutting to make a nice clean cut. You'll see me using these today. In addition, what I use most often when it comes to vines are actually these loppers. So these can prune even your largest vines. They do a really clean cut. Because I know I'm going to be making some cuts up near the trunk, I will be using a folding saw today. This one's used when you have larger branches or if you're up against two branches. One thing that is a little bit different, this is actually a tape gun or a tapener. I'm going to be using this to actually tape down our new vines on my three-foot wire. So you guys will see me using this today. And last but not least, the new thing in my arsenal this year, this is my Dewalt pruning shear. These can actually be used with just about anything. So we'll see if these get pulled out today. So now when it comes to pruning grapevines, we have, well, we actually have three different ways that we prune them. We do prune them on pergolas or trellises. We won't be covering that today. Last year, we showed you how we spur prune a couple of our different varieties. But what we're focusing on today is we're focusing on our Thompson grapevines. And these vines actually need to be cane pruned, which is a little bit different. The key to cane pruning is actually the head. This is the head of what is essentially our trunk on these vines. So you can see I have several large canes that are coming right out of this head. Now, I do have my canes from last year that produced all of our fruit, but I'm really focusing on this part of the vine this year because this is basically all of our renewal canes. This is where all of our production from this year is going to be. So what you're going to see us doing first is basically getting down to just the vines that are coming out of the head of this trunk. So you can see last year's cane that actually gave all of our production. It's right up here against this one. I don't know for sure, but I might want to have this as my cane or this one. So I'm going to go ahead and remove this guy here. So I'm really dealing with just the head. In order to do that, I'm actually going to be using my handsaw. I want to make sure that I'm not cutting into the cane and I'm only taking off last year's cane. All right, so you can see nice clean cut here. No cut on this cane. So this one's actually still in play for this year. We definitely want to make sure we're maintaining the head of this. So I will be using basically a backup cane. I think this vertical one right here is probably what I'll do. I have a node here or a bud that would face this way. I have a bud that would face this way. So if I get canes going both directions next year, that's about perfect as far as what we want to do. And I have other options down here. Now this cane looks a little bit thin. You want to choose canes that are at least a pencil width and thickness. Now this would do that, but it's just a little bit short and I want to make sure that I get plenty of production all the way down this side on my three foot wire. And then I need to choose between these two canes here. Now it doesn't matter too much, but I've got this guy here that's a little higher up. And this head, I want to make sure I keep a few inches below my three foot wire. So I think I'm probably going to choose this cane here, lay it down on the wire, choose this cane, and lay this one down on the wire. Get it Willow. Get it girl. So here's a finished cane prune Thompson grapevine. Now I did call an audible as I was going through and pruning. This I was going to keep as our backup. I decided to use this one as the backup instead. It has two buds that are both facing, or one facing this direction, the other facing the other. And this one's lower down. It's about two to three inches below my three foot wire. But these canes are laid down. This is where all of our new shoots and vines will come out of, go up to our four and a half and six foot wire. And all of our production will fall in between the three and six foot space. All right. So we talked a little bit about the head being far enough beneath this wire. We kind of messed up on one of these. I want to show you, we're going to have to kind of make up for it and redirect here in their third year. So we've got a lot going on with this. I wanted to clean it up so you guys could see, but this is my three foot wire here. You can see this is actually where we had the head established, which was just way too high. We had a couple year project. We're basically working with this particular vine because of the way it initially grew. So what we're going to do is we're going to actually bring that down. This is about six inches. So this is about the distance, almost ideal for the head to be. So I kind of need it to be here, not here. So we've got a couple of canes here that are a little bit low and I'm going to work on hopefully establishing the head down here lower. So we're going to go ahead and get these set on the wire and move on. This can go this way. So we give a really good before and after shot of exactly what this looks like. There's a tremendous amount of cane growth throughout the season on these vines. So pruning it this much is really required, but you can see how clean it looks. What's great, sometimes we don't get, especially on these young vines, we don't actually get two arms. We were able to get two canes basically on all of those and a renewal cane right in the middle, basically on every one of these. Of course, what we're really looking forward to come this summer is a fantastic harvest of seedless Thompson grapes. So just want to thank you for joining us today. If you haven't done so already, subscribe to the channel. We cover a lot of things here on this newly established functioning farm here in the Arizona desert and would love to see on a regular basis. If you have any questions or comments, those go in the comment section down below and our Amazon shop, I'll leave a link down in the description. If you start with the link down below, it doesn't matter what you buy. You help to support us here. Oh, and a lot of the tools that you saw us using today will be in that shop under the pruning section. So just want to thank you for joining us today and remind you if we can farm on the edge of nowhere, so can you. Before we get started, I want to. Hey, Bruno. What's up, buddy? I know you want pets. I got to get to work. Glasses. Hey, Willow. Girl, get out of the way. Okay. Kitty. This one looks pretty good, but this one's actually just angled perfectly. Girl. Hey. Hey, what are you doing?