How to prune a grape vine?

I know it's not time yet but I wonder if anyone can sugggest a Grape-Vine-Pruning-Guide-for-Idiots, preferably with pictures or diagrams? I'm getting rather confused reading wordy descriptions of growing canes, renewal buds and fruiting spurs ....
I have one red grape vine which is in its 3rd year, which seems to be a critical time for correct pruning, and another white vine which is new this year. I gather it's best to avoid pruning altogether for a new vine in the first season. (?) If anyone has a useful link or website, I'd be grateful. Thanks.
Lindy.

 

What a good question I would be pleased to know too

 

Do either of these help Lindy.

http://www.theanswerbank.co.uk/Home-and-Garden/Question149829.html

http://www.whatprice.co.uk/gardening/grape-vine-mistakes.html

Or you could go here...got pictures as well.

http://www.my-grape-vine.com/

:thumb:

 

:thumb:Good articles, quite clear info. though I don't think I'll buy the My Grape Vine book - I'm sure info from Gardeners' Corner experts is just as good! I feel a bit clearer about how a vine grows now. I'd still like to see a diagram or pic of the different parts of a vine, showing the relationship between the main trunk and the canes and renewal buds etc. Can I train my new vine so that the branches coming off the trunk all come off the same side - like a letter E ? It's on one end of the side of a shed so I can't put any support on its left side. Ta, Lindy.

 

I'm no expert but I am sure that you can grow a grape vine in any direction, and shape that you want to. A single run grown up and along a trellis. A three way split over the top of a pergola or a neat espalier style, whatever. Best if the grapes get a lot of sun from the south, but I have seen them growing in all the wrong spots and shapes. My own is over a pergola and this year has many bunches on it. Whether or not they will ripen is another thing, with the weather that we have been having. Currently, the grapes are about half the size that I would expect them to be at picking time.

I live in hope
stony

 

Nope, it's no good, I still don't understand how to prune a grapevine. Mine has produced 3 bunches of nice-tasting grapes this year, more a result of the rain than anything I've done, I fear.

I've just had a look at this site:
http://www.gardenadvice.co.uk/advisor/gardening-tips/vitus-madeleine-sylvaner-care/
and found this goobledegook:


"The side shoots, ‘the laterals’ need to be cut back an inch from the leader. It is on these side shoot that the fruiting spurs will be formed. In the spring and summer you need to train the side shoots horizontally pruning the side shoots leaving five leaves on them." If you've cut off the side shoots how can they form fruiting spurs? If you've already cut them back to an inch, how can you train them and cut them back again??

I dooon't understaaand!!!

 

I've found a guide on this Lady's blog,

http://mytinyplot.com/pruning/how-to-winter-prune-a-grape-vine/

Hope that makes things clearer.

 

Thanks! Good photos. I had figured out this bit about the two arms and have been doing this each spring - more or less- though I hadn't quite absorbed the fact that you have to train in two new branches each year and cut out the rest. A bit like a blackberry, then.

But after that the vine just goes completely mad producing growths in all directions so by Autumn it's just a tangled mass of wayward stems with erm, three tiny bunches of grapes on. What is the point of letting it produce all those stems if they are just going to get cut off again?

 

I think thats why they invented Dolmades.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/dolmades_72399

You have to thin the bunches out too, taking out the smaller grapes so the rest get bigger, worked with mine last year.

 

I used to grow them on two permanent stems both from the base.
All growth gets cut back to the main stem, leaving one bud to grow the following spring.
Its much simpler, I think, than the Guyot system described in the last link.

I'm sure I'd never get that to work, in much the same way I could never get a similar type of replacement pruning to work on peaches.