Yes, as promised, the secateurs were sharpened and from the stiff and swollen right hand I have at the moment,  I can vouch that I have done a few days pruning.

Started with some cane pruning of the Viognier (Montpellier clone) where I use hand secateurs as I like to pull the canes out of the wires as I go. Takes a little longer but you can actually see some progress.  The HTK clone of Viognier is grafted and as a result has much greater vigour. I think I will have to resort to the electric secateurs here as the cuts are larger, the gong will be slower and I will need to conserve my energy for the 5,000 Merlot vines.

Speaking of the Merlot, in preparation for its pruning I had it pre-pruned by machine on Saturday.

This can be done where one spur prunes, that is cutting back to two bud spurs. It saves a lot of time as the vertcal canes are mulched by the multi-bladed spinning head which is hydraulically driven.

The head straddles the vine row and is manipulated around the posts trying not to cut the wires. A good operator can move along at between 3 and 4 kms/hour.

As seen it does a great job cuting just above the lower set of foliage wires. All the vertical canes which have been chopped up mostly fall to the ground.

What remains is a series of short 4 to 6 bud spurs ready to be pruned back to two buds. This job is then very quick and relatively easy.

Keep you posted on the progress.

Vineman 

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 17th, 2007 at 1:54 pm and is filed under Gherardi Vineyard, Vineman Equipment, viticulture. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.