Winter pruning

This operation is removed a large proportion (80-95%) of the wood produced in the year and it is common opinion that this has a beneficial effect on the lives and its development capacity. In fact the screw produces naturally without it being necessary to resort to pruning, but this operation culture technique is the most economical to lower the number of clusters present on each plant, improve the quality of the grapes, limit production making regular and constant, favoring a rapid fructification, increase the size of the clusters, reduce the need of thinning for the control of production. The pruning, if the productivity is solely controlled in this way, must leave a number of buds sufficient to produce the amount of clusters that the screw is able to bring to full maturation.
From the planting of rooted vine until the completion of the desired shape (2-4 years) you run the pruning of breeding, which aims to ensure the most rapid development of the skeletal structure of the screw in relation to the chosen system and get the most quickly put to use young plants, not only making cuts thanks to the multifunction pliers, but also ligatures and placements. During the early years of the plants require a maximum leaf surface to replenish the reserves of carbohydrates, chamfers to stimulate more growth and need to be deprived of any clusters that remove nutrients vegetative activity.
Once the chosen type of farming is carried out pruning of production until the end of the productive life of the vineyard. It is the winter pruning, also called pruning, performed annually during the period of vegetative rest of the screws, and has the following purposes: to ensure the maintenance of the shape and size of the individual screws to facilitate all the cultivation operations, adjust the load of gems per vine, choose the best gems in relation to their production capacity, optimally distribute the gems on each screw, get the renewal of vegetation at the desired points, achieving balance between vegetative and productive phase, the desired quality and the lignification branches.
Other useful considerations used to evaluate the conditions of development of the shoots to be used in pruning are: adequate level of lignification, branches with long internodes typical of the variety, mean diameter of the branch, the branch location suitable.
Winter pruning should be carried out in the period between the fall of the leaves and the beginning of vegetative growth, so it is an intervention that can be performed in a wide span of time, but by qualified personnel. Whereas early pruning induce a slight early budding with the problem of late frost, while pruning later to delay, it is good practice agronomic crop before the late vines and then those early.
Some farming systems productive formations that do not exceed 3-4 buds (spurs), then it is a short pruning, while in the forms in which the branch is shortened to 7-8 buds it comes to long pruning in the case of cultivars with a low fertility rate of basal buds you use the latter mode above. The table varieties require pruning very long.
The following list briefly describes the production pruning of the guyot and cordon that are currently regarded as the most important forms of farming.
Guyot pruning takes place in a mixed, given the presence of a spur and a cane.
It is carried out by removing the old fruiting (cutting of the past), raccorciando the highest of the branches of the old spur (cut this to 7-8 buds) and 2 buds in ramming the lowest (cutting of the future). In cases of screws that rise excessively trying to lower them again with a possible sarmento that check in the lower part of the strain.
This system provides satisfactory productions with vines basal fertility very poor and relative simplicity of operation of pruning. On the other hand, it may incur imbalances vegetative-productive tied to specific placements in the fruiting and difficulties in adopting mechanical pruning (selection, placement and ligation), and also the lack of reserves contained in the weld can cause permanent problems in years of poor productivity and problems of overproduction for expanded forms in good years.
In cordon is maintained spurs of 2-3 knots of permanent branches, then we talk about pruning, it is necessary to be able to apply sufficient fertility of basal buds.
Of the two branches of the spur of the previous year, the best and possibly the lower rams to 2-3 buds, while the top should be deleted. A drawback found with time is the formation of secondary branches, because the Spurs move away gradually from the umbilical. In this case one tries to reduce the vegetation, using some branch that sprouts from the same cord, close to the branch to delete.
Among the advantages, the same load gemmario, the cordon regularizes the budding, improves the uniformity of vegetation, allows a more homogeneous maturation, allows locating the band vegetative and productive in defined areas of the canopy, requires shorter time of pruning than long, this kind of farming is executable mechanical pruning (machines equipped with the cutting that speronano the branches to 2-3 buds as they advance) which takes 3-5 hours per hectare, lowering costs compared to manual that you can do with the multifunction pliers.