Dormant Pruning

Happy new year! While some have started their winter pruning, most people get started pruning after the new year. While pruning timing choices often come down to labor, I wanted to post some resources so you can all refresh yourselves since pruning is one of the most vital vineyard care activities. We are currently getting a grower pruning workshop organized, so stay tuned, but it likely will be a later session (late Feb/early Mar) so be sure to check out the resources below and/or contact your county Extension agent. I am running two training sessions for county agents on pruning in the next month and a half and many of you are in counties with agents who are already very knowledgeable on pruning (in fact, I have Clark MacAllister and Nathan Eason helping me teach the dormant pruning section of the new UGA undergraduate/graduate class on vineyard management!).

Resources:

• General Pruning Resources:
  • Dormant Spur and Cane Pruning – UGA Extension Publication – B1505
  • Step-by-Step Muscadine Pruning – NCSU extension document – AG776
  • Pruning Muscadine Grapes – UGA Extension Publication – C1268

• Thinking about different Pruning Strategies:
  • Late winter pruning, frost protection 2018 Hickey blog post
  • Delayed Pruning (on Chardonnay) – 2018 Hickey Seminar to UGA Horticulture Dept.
  • Vineyard Frost Protection – UGA Extension Publication – B1490
• Trunk Disease
  • ASEV-ES Hang Time on Pruning and Trunk Disease – Fall 2023 VIDEO on youtube
  • Trunk Disease and Topsin Use– 2021 Brannen blog posts

UPCOMING EVENTS:

• 28-30 Jan, 2024 – GWP Annual Meeting – Macon, GA – https://www.georgiawineproducers.org/event-5508084

• See the upcoming EVEF schedule for both viticulture and enology events :https://extension.psu.edu/fourth-annual-eastern-viticulture-and-enology-forum-webinar-series. The next one is Wednesday, Jan 10 from noon to 1:30 PM on Building Better Spray Programs and the practical takeaways from the FRAME project on fungicide resistance. Yours truly will be helping to host this one, so call me biased, but this should be something you don’t want to miss!