# Pruning - Dealing with cold damage



## spaniel (May 21, 2014)

We had a 70-100 year winter here; 3 consecutive -15F days with high winds and then a couple more several weeks later.

With the exception of my Foch, my varieties sustained significant and varied levels of damage. 

My couple table varieties (Candice and Ontario) had very high percentage bud growth and were not as well established as the wine grapes. I left extra buds that may still open beyong the ~20% that did, and removed all flowers so as not to crop them this year.

My Oberlin Noir looks to have broken only 20-30% of the buds. The rest are not quite dead, and some seem to be opening very late. I pruned them leaving a lot of extra buds, so that if more open I can always remove the extra.

My Cayuga were the hardest hit. Most of them had 100% bud kill. A few have a small number of buds open - 2-3 for the whole vine. Anything smaller than the cordons (almost 1") looks completely dead. While this means that the trunk is at least partly functional, with the ones sprouting new growth from the ground I am tempted to cut off the trunks above the new growth and establish new trunks from the root; obviously this will cost me a couple years of crop. I am just concerned that what is there may be too damaged to ever really recover and I'm not sure where enough new growth would come from to ever be right again. Thoughts? The ones not sprouting any new growth yet I would just wait and see. This stinks as these were 6 year vines that were good producers.


----------



## blumentopferde (May 21, 2014)

Two years ago I cut all of my old vines back to a small stump as most of them were damaged by Esca. About a third of them did develop new shoots which grew very vigorously, the rest just died. The survivors bore fruits the second year after the cut.

I'm not an expert at all, so beware, but I'd cut back all damaged trunks as damaged trunks are an open door for diseases. When I cut through the trunks of my old vines I could see that Esca developed exactly along the cracks the stems had from previous frost damage....


----------



## grapeman (May 21, 2014)

Your best bet would be to cut back the trunk and let new ones grow. I feel your pain. We had some losses here also. The Cayuga looked OK when we pruned, but the buds were apparently dead so we have to retrain trunks also from the base. I'm not sure the Steuben will even send up new shoots from the base they are so dead. Every single trunk split- a lot. When you grow a crop of any kind you need to roll with the punches. I have rolled so many times over the years, I get dizzy.


----------



## spaniel (May 21, 2014)

grapeman said:


> Your best bet would be to cut back the trunk and let new ones grow. I feel your pain. We had some losses here also. The Cayuga looked OK when we pruned, but the buds were apparently dead so we have to retrain trunks also from the base. I'm not sure the Steuben will even send up new shoots from the base they are so dead. Every single trunk split- a lot. *When you grow a crop of any kind you need to roll with the punches.* I have rolled so many times over the years, I get dizzy.



Thanks, this is what I thought. The trunks have no visible damage but unless a LOT of buds come out in the next couple weeks...down they come.

This vineyard is the closest I am to farming now....but I grew up farming...so I'm well familiar with this game. Just with typical farming a crop loss is only one year.


----------



## spaniel (Jun 4, 2014)

Tonight I went into the vineyard with a chainsaw. It was painful but the correct decision. The Cayuga trunks I cut off, while there were a few buds growing on most of them, had clear and serious damage even at the thickest part where I cut them off. In the long run, I will come out ahead.

Given the 6-7 year roots on them, they are growing so fast that some of them have root-sprung shoots I can tie up to the bottom wire if I can get stakes put in this week. It looks like I may be able to get a crop in 2015 and only lose 1 year completely. Now that I have the opportunity, I am going to change them to a 2-trunk TWC. A silver lining is that these were my oldest vines and I was clueless and busy becoming a new father when I planted them, so the original trunks were not as good as they could have been. But it was still painful to buzz them off. Only 2/20 have no ground-originating growth. I cut them off anyways, hoping the lack of sub-optimal shoots up high will force them to push new shoots low.

On the plus side, the Foch seem unfazed and are setting an even heavier crop than last year. I just bottled 2013 vintage and even young the Foch promises to be the best red I've done to date.


----------



## Pat57 (Jun 5, 2014)

Sorry for your loss, but be aware that severe cold winters can occur much sooner than every 70 years or so. A lot of people, me included, think we are entering a period of "global cooling" , not warming. I had a lot of winter damage here to ornamental trees that were "supposed" to be hardy in zone 4, where I'm at, and they were hit hard, some even died. These were smaller trees, but they'd seen -25F before and didn't make it after -28F last winter. 

I now won't try anything that can't handle at least -30F 
As for grapes, I've narrowed my list down to these varieties:
Marquette
Petite Pearl
Golubok
Baltica
Landot Noir
Ives
Castel 19-637

These should give me a good mix of grapes for varietals and for blending. I will grow the Landot, Ives and Castel on a low wire VSP so I can cover them with snow in the winter just in case. They are rated for zone 4, but to be safe I'm growing them low. The others are supposed to be able to handle -30F without any significant damage. My vines are all now in their second year so I've got a ways to go. Will be getting them trained this season after pruning them back to a few buds this spring. they're really taking off right now, seem to grow about 2-3" a day.

Pat


----------



## grapeman (Jun 5, 2014)

Here we find the Landot Noir experiences damage from cold much before -20F.

Also beware that some of the Landot Noir out there is infected with Leaf Roll Virus. If you get nice crimson leaves later in the year with green veins, you probably have it.


----------



## GreginND (Jun 5, 2014)

Hard to cut them down like that but it is the best thing to do. I'm sure your vines will bounce back in no time.

Pat, those are good varieties. I made wine from Baltica this year and really like the grape. I need to get some into my vineyard.


----------



## Pat57 (Jun 5, 2014)

grapeman said:


> Here we find the Landot Noir experiences damage from cold much before -20F.
> 
> Also beware that some of the Landot Noir out there is infected with Leaf Roll Virus. If you get nice crimson leaves later in the year with green veins, you probably have it.



That's really strange. The vine that grew the most for me last summer was Landot Noir. It grew 2 shoots straight up to almost 8'. I intentionally left them there all winter to see if the cold would damage them. I cut them back from the top in late March and every piece from the top down showed nice green tissue ? But I can grow them low also if I have to. No crimson leaves here, they looked great all season.

Pat


----------



## grapeman (Jun 5, 2014)

Pat hopefully they keep growing well for you. I'm just relaying experience we have had with them in Willsboro NY at the Cornell Baker Farm. They have gotten so bad that they will be removed - and it is a trial vineyard.


----------



## Pat57 (Jun 6, 2014)

grapeman said:


> Pat hopefully they keep growing well for you. I'm just relaying experience we have had with them in Willsboro NY at the Cornell Baker Farm. They have gotten so bad that they will be removed - and it is a trial vineyard.



I see that Double A Vines have them listed as Zone 4, which is down to -30F, but it sounds like yours are not even able to survive Zone 5, kinda strange. What kind of trellis do you them on?

Pat


----------



## grapeman (Jun 6, 2014)

Honestly Pat, I think some of the varieties have changed on their charts. Not sure what is up with it, but I have noticed several varieties that have been zone 5 ever since being released are now listed as zone 4. I believe it is in error. For example, Steuben was released I believe in 1948 and has been listed as zone 5. This year, their chart shows it as zone 4. 100% of my Steuben this year have split trunks and must be replaced. It got down to 20 to 22 below F here. If it was a zone 4 vine, there would not have been any problems with it.


----------

