Vigorous Growth of Head Trained Canes?

[NorCal]

Pruned / suckered to two canes per spur. Since then, the vines have gone bonkers. Seems like they are just loving this thing called water, which we had not had much of for 4 years or so. It is too labor intensive to go in and hand sucker. The company that is contracted to take care of the vineyards is going to mechanically cut back the vines, to allow mowing between the rows.

What will this do to the vine? Will it change the maturation process of the grapes? He knows there must be a certain number of leaves per cluster, is anything over that not useful to the grape?

We have no problem with ripeness.

 

[Johny99]

A lot of the literature talks of weighing pruning to assess vigor and using that to determine how many bunches to allow per vine. Since it seems you are having a very vigorous year, I'd think that if you don't crop higher than you did in the past, and don't machine trim to less foliage than you had in past years, you should stay in balance, or at least as you were.

Just my thoughts. Glad your drought has broken

 

[grapeman]

Welcome to my world of dealing with plentiful rainfall and vigorous growing vines. Around here I need to leave more shoots per spur and extra clusters to soak up some of that vigor you are dealing with. Later I go back and get rid of excess shoots and some clusters once the vine slows down with heat of the summer. Wait as long as you can to hedge back the excessively vigorous shoots or you will force laterals and make a bad situation worse. I usually try to wait until close to veraison if possible to hedge. That seems to be the best compromise. Good luck with dealing with it. Here we have had a roller coaster of a spring with it going from 55 to 85, rain, wind, etc time after time. Today it is 90 with a 35 mph breeze and the vines are making creaking noises as they grow!