Marquette Grape?

[Masbustelo]

Probably prune everything that is not coming off the cordons you now have established. Personally, I prune the tendrils off as they appear, it makes the shoots less tangled and easier to maintain order.

 

[GreginND]

Looks great! I agree . . . pull off all those shoots coming out of the trunk.

 

[tbayav8er]

Alright I did a little bit of pruning. How's this? Thanks!

 

[Masbustelo]

Perfecto.

 

[tbayav8er]

Just did some pruning. I cut off some of the canes past the fruit, and cut off all of the tendrils I could find growing. Thoughts?

 

[Masbustelo]

Your not confusing tendrils with shoots? he shoots look short, but everything looks great, nice color. The tomatoes look healthy too.

 

[tbayav8er]

Yes, sorry. I cut back some all of the tendrils I could see growing, AND I cut back some shoots that I thought were taking too much energy. Is it a no-no to cut off shoots mid season?

 

[BigH]

To answer your question, summer pruning does not inherently harm the vine. Shoot thinning, hedging, skirting, lateral removal, and leaf pulling are all common forms of summer pruning. It won't kill or harm the vine, but it does invigorate the vine to grow more.

That said ... I would personally not cut the end off any fruiting shoot until it has enough leaves to ripen the fruit, which is about a dozen or more for a Marquette shoot with two clusters. IMO, you removed too much. You pruned some shoots off just 2 nodes past the fruit, which leaves only 4 nodes for the entire thing.

In practice, I don't prune fruiting shoots in the summer until they reach the ground (aka "skirting"). Some people advocate pinching off the end of vigorous shoots from the head region to try and divert energy to weaker shoots, but I am pretty sure they would advise you to keep more than 2 nodes.

just my 2 cents.

H

 

[CrazyCalgary]

I have a question, and don't mean to hijack this thread whatsoever, but I am looking into planting around 5-10 Marquette vines in my yard here in Calgary. Is it possible to "train" the tendrils to weave from top to bottom in a sort of an "S" shape? Would this cause any harm?

The reason I'm asking is to save horizontal space, and to be able to fit more vines side by side. I presume limiting the horizontal growth to about 4ft before "training" the tendril downward would be appropriate?

tbayav8er, that growth this year looks awesome!

Thanks in advance.

 

[tbayav8er]

Unfortunately, I can't help with that, since I have almost no grape growing experience myself, but I thought I would share a couple of pictures of my vine that I took today!

 

[Rice_Guy]

. . Is it possible to "train" the tendrils to weave from top to bottom in a sort of an "S" shape? Would this cause any harm?

You can prune to any shape you want without hurting the vine. In Calgary consider planting on a south wall. The general reason for the wire is to maximize light exposure.

 

[Masbustelo]

I suspect that training in an S shape will cause apical dominance issues. Some of the nodes will grow strongly and others perhaps not at all.

 

[montanarick]

I have a question, and don't mean to hijack this thread whatsoever, but I am looking into planting around 5-10 Marquette vines in my yard here in Calgary. Is it possible to "train" the tendrils to weave from top to bottom in a sort of an "S" shape? Would this cause any harm?

The reason I'm asking is to save horizontal space, and to be able to fit more vines side by side. I presume limiting the horizontal growth to about 4ft before "training" the tendril downward would be appropriate?

tbayav8er, that growth this year looks awesome!

Thanks in advance.

my Marquettes tend to grow straight up and then drop over of their own accord - so not sure why there would be a need to train them to do so?

 

[wfournier]

I have a question, and don't mean to hijack this thread whatsoever, but I am looking into planting around 5-10 Marquette vines in my yard here in Calgary. Is it possible to "train" the tendrils to weave from top to bottom in a sort of an "S" shape? Would this cause any harm?

The reason I'm asking is to save horizontal space, and to be able to fit more vines side by side. I presume limiting the horizontal growth to about 4ft before "training" the tendril downward would be appropriate?

tbayav8er, that growth this year looks awesome!

Thanks in advance.

Are you trying to accomplish creating a longer cordon in a shorter space? I don't think this will work because the shoots growing off the cordon (with top wire training) hang down and I think you will end up with denser vegetation and a lack of sun/airflow. Maybe something like a Scott Henry system or GDC would help in your situation but I don't know how the vines would respond to those systems.

 

[BigH]

I have a question, and don't mean to hijack this thread

Consider starting a new thread

I am looking into planting around 5-10 Marquette vines in my yard here in Calgary. Is it possible to "train" the tendrils to weave from top to bottom in a sort of an "S" shape? Would this cause any harm?

I think you mean shoots or cordons and not tendrils. A diagram would help. I think people are having a tough time visualizing what you mean.

The reason I'm asking is to save horizontal space, and to be able to fit more vines side by side. I presume limiting the horizontal growth to about 4ft before "training" the tendril downward would be appropriate?

More vines does not equal more fruit. X feet along a single horizontal wire only has so much fruiting capacity. A well balanced Marquette vine will have nodes every 6 inches or so, and fruiting shoots only emerge from nodes. If you have, say, 40 feet of space, then you will have 80 nodes capable of producing fruiting shoots. Allocating those 80 nodes across 10 vines instead of 5 isn't going to give you more fruit. What it will do is create a vegetative mess because you tried to confine each vine to 4 feet of space.

That is my answer based on what I think you are trying to do, but your use of the word "tendril" is really throwing me for a loop. The tendril is the short, coil shaped growth from a shoot that wraps around whatever is handy. They are also referred as "clingers". I have never heard of anyone training their tendrils, so I think you have latched on to the wrong viticulture term.

H

 

[tbayav8er]

Here's the juice I got. It's about a gallon. Hopefully the colour turns more red, as it ferments on the skins.

 

[wfournier]

Wow those are some pulverized grapes, how were they crushed? The juice from our marquette was a pink/red color right after crushing and darkened significantly while fermenting on the skins.

 

[tbayav8er]

I used a potato masher, and then used my hands. We'll see how it turns out. Going to add the yeast today. Hopefully the juice turns more red.

 

[wfournier]

I used a potato masher, and then used my hands. We'll see how it turns out. Going to add the yeast today. Hopefully the juice turns more red.

My guess is it will get more red, I think you may have done a more thorough job of crushing them than is necessary. I'm not an expert but I think the main goal is to break the skins so the juice can be released. Everything loosens up during fermentation and comes free on it's own that way. As long as the seeds aren't crushed I don't think it'll make a difference, maybe a different sort of cap. I've heard crushing the seeds can result in more astringency.

 

[tbayav8er]

Ah okay. I am pretty sure a few of the seeds got crushed. We'll see how it turns out! This is my first time ever trying to make wine from grapes, so I'm sure there will be a lot of lessons to be learned. PH was about 3.5 when I checked, and SG 1.090...So those numbers look alright, but we'll see how the colour, aroma, tannin etc. turns out. None of the grapes were really dark purple. They were all sort of light purple in colour. It's going to be getting close to the freezing mark here very soon, so I figured I should harvest now if I'm going to get anything at all. Based on the sugar/acidity levels, they are fairly close to proper ripeness anyway I think.