# Flower Clusters on 1st Year Vines



## Corley5 (Jun 2, 2012)

I was in the vineyard a couple evenings back puttering around with some tying and noticed that the Louise Swenson and Brianna that we planted a month ago are loaded with flowers clusters  I started picking them off but ran out of daylight. Both are 1-X vines from Double A and are growing very well . I was going to finish the task today but it's still raining and rained most of yesterday as well. We really need the moisture. I'll finish stripping them later today or tomorrow whenever the rain quits.


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## grapeman (Jun 2, 2012)

Yes you really do need to get rid of those on the young vines.


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## btom2004 (Jun 3, 2012)

Why do you need to remove flower clusters? From my understanding of things, I always thought that it is the flowers that must get pollinated and at which fruits then grow from. Please do explain as I want to start growing some grapes.


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## grapeman (Jun 3, 2012)

btom2004, you do not want vines that were just planted to be allowed to fruit for the first few years. That will slow down their growth and initial establishment. If you pick the flower clusters off, they do not fruit and will form faster.


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## fivebk (Jun 3, 2012)

It's a 3-4 year investment before you harvest a single grape!!!

BOB


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## btom2004 (Jun 3, 2012)

grapeman said:


> btom2004, you do not want vines that were just planted to be allowed to fruit for the first few years. That will slow down their growth and initial establishment. If you pick the flower clusters off, they do not fruit and will form faster.


Ok great I understand...wow yet again you must wait years for everthing with making wine. LOL...it appears that I will be making wine for years before I ever get to drink any. Dang I might as well go ahead and plant my pecan tree seedings and in about ten years or so have some wine them...lol


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## FTC Wines (Jun 3, 2012)

That's why Lon invented Skeeter Pee, it's a very fast [30+ days] wine, an EASY drinker, and most important it allow your good wines to mature. I made some Cranberry Wine last Thanksgiving for next Thanksgiving & used it's slurry to start a batch of SP [2 lemon & 1 lime], it was my best batch of SP out of 6. Roy PS my vines our now 5 yrs. old & finally are loaded with grapes!


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## TJsBasement (Jun 3, 2012)

I been reading about different plants, strawberry, grape, currant, everyone is advising to pluck the flowers on first year plants. Think about it like this, the plant can only collect so much solar energy from the limited green it has, when a small plant attempts to make fruit that takes loads of solar so the plant has nothing left to grow more plant with so you have a small plant with a small root system going as hard as it can to make fruit but its just not getting the supplies it needs so everything suffers. Think marathon runner breathing thru a straw.


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## tatud4life (Jun 3, 2012)

Although I agree and understand with plucking the flowers, I forgot to do that on my vines last year and also my blackberries and raspberries this year and last year!! My berries are doing great thank goodness!!! The canes are all at least 4 feet and sturdy as a rock. They do have a hard time with a no rain period though. Hopefully, they will be fine. On a better note, my 3 year old muscadine has little flowers all over it!!!! Going to be a good year!!!


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## btom2004 (Jun 5, 2012)

FTC Wines: Thanks I will look into the SP.
@TJsBasement: I understand.
@tatud4life: Yeah I mean I'm only going to be planting a few so, I may just let it go; maybe add some fertillizer or MG to the soil?


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## tatud4life (Jun 5, 2012)

I applied triple 10 about a week after I planted them and that really seemed to help them a lot. I even have a couple of raspberries on one of the heritage. Not a good practice, but it hasn't seemed to hurt mine so far. Only time will tell.


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## btom2004 (Jun 5, 2012)

Great info thanks.


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## tatud4life (Jun 5, 2012)

You are very welcome my friend! I'm just. Is getting into this stuff, so I am learning on the fly. Anything that I find that works, I will post here. Maybe it can help someone else. I know that I am constantly on the lookout for helpful little tidbits of info.


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