Determining Cold Weather damage in cold climate grapes

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grapeman

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GreginND had asked this question in my normal thread, but I thought it might be a good topic for it's own so here is what I told him.

The questions:
What do damaged buds vs healthy buds look like while dormant?
And then how do you prune accordingly?


My answer to him:
Greg the info is probably somewhere in this mamouth post or in the one on the Cornell Baker Farm, but I will find the slides to show you.
Basically you take and prune off a few typical shoots to examine throughout the vineyard to make a representative sample- 100 makes it easy but if you only have a few vines a few shoots will suffice.
Examine buds representative of ones you would like to keep. A magnifying glass or loop helps. Using a one sided razor blade works well. Holding the cane with the tip towards you cut through the bud on an angle about a quarter way down. Look for green within the bud which is sort of like an onion-in layers which become the leaves later. Where you see green indicates live tissue. If all you see is brown, cut a bit deeper and check again. If the whole bud is brown it is dead. If it is streaked, it is damaged but might grow. Record live or dead for each bud checked and if you use 100 buds, the count of live buds gives % live buds or brown count equals dead buds.

Adjusting numbers is pretty straightforward. If you want as an example 50 live buds to provide your shoots and you have 40% dead buds or 60% live buds divide 50 by .60 for 83+ so you need to leave 83 buds to get the desired 50 live buds. I'm sure you get the idea.

Here are 2 videos from Hans Walter Peterson on how to evaluate damage.
All credit for them is to Hans and the Finger Lakes Grape Program of Cornell.
[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_RHJ5mY3fAs"]YouTube[/ame]

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eWtr0jzI2Dk"]YouTube[/ame]



Somewhere I have pictures that show the live versus dead better and I will see if I can find them.​

Here is a link to
GRAPES 101
How Grapevine Buds Gain and Lose Cold-Hardiness​
http://grapesandwine.cals.cornell.edu/appellation-cornell/issue-5/grapes-101.cfm
this will give you more insight into this.
 

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