Pruning of Grape vines

Could someone please guide me to information about how and when to prune Thompson seedless grape vines. I have searched here at DG and been unsuccessful. Thanks for your help.

Grapes are easy to prune. Wait till their dormant and then just cut them way back, fruit will be on the new growth.

Let's see if I can find a better answer than that. http://www.extension.iastate.edu/Publications/rg502.pdf

There are tricks to getting maximum yield but I really don't think it makes that much of a difference. I you have mildew problems or something like that then you need to watch for airflow through the vine.

Hope that helps you.

Here is one that is for Arizona and mentions Thompson seedless. Scroll down a bit on the page and see there is a section on pruning.

http://www.phoenixtropicals.com/grapes.html

I am a newbie grape grower too! I wondered why DG doesn't have a separate forum for grapes. There must be lots of us?

Thank you for the help.

Your welcome farmergray. Good luck!

I am new to grapes too, thanks for the info!
All that pruning is a bit daunting!

We pruned the other day. I have grapes from 2004, 2006 and 2007. We tried to train the four arm kniffen. Ha! That didn't exactly work. Last year we had a pretty good crop, but a ton of vines.

I took my clipboard out with two examples to prune by, but we ended up just cutting back, and most likely left them too long.

A 2004 Concord grape.

I live in zone 4. I was under the impression that I should only prune grapes in the spring. Can I prune grapes in the fall? That would be a big time saver for me. Also, can I transplant trees or Heritage raspberries in the fall?

All my books say that as long as they are dormant. We've been thru a couple of freezes, so we went ahead. I always heard to prune in February ( for zone 5 ) but I decided do it now.

Also, trimming them and having them bleed out is a myth too. The ''bleed'' is just water and they quit doing that when they leaf out. So, since we had way too much vine this year, I'm going to trim the grapeless one's off next year.

HelenVT,
you should only prune your grapes in the dead of winter, while standing waist deep in new snow. That way, all the trimmings will sink in the snow and you can put off picking them up until Spring. JUST KIDDING! Do a test trim in the Fall and watch for any sap (looks like water) coming out. If there's no sap, you could trim away.

Paul