Pruning the Grapevines

Saturday morning found the sun shining on the farm. One of the day's tasks was to prune the grapevines. Brother White gave us a lesson on how to properly tame the vine. He described how a grapevine has long "runners" that begin to grow and really take off. During the growing process, tiny vines will sprout along the runner and begin to wrap themselves around the branch. These tiny vines act as "chokers" to the vine. Wherever a choker is wrapped, the vine will stop growing right at that spot. So, the task was to find the chokers and remove them. Then we had to trim back the runners so they weren't poking out in the walkways.

Here is a picture of some unruly grapevines that are protruding into the walkway.

A few volunteers pruning the vines.

A choker! See that coil wrapped around the vine. It needs to be snipped and removed.

A tidy walkway with the vines trimmed.