[Bert]

The house I'm now living in has a very large well established grape vine in the porch. I have no experience at all with grapes (apart from eating them and making grape gin ) . When, how do I prune it?

[denmylne]

it is a bit late to prune it now, the sap is rising and it will bleed,
feed it dried blood
next year prune it back, you can be very severe with a vine

[HesterF]

The grape vines in vineyards are taken back hard each year. If you've got a climbing one that is partly to look pretty, you might want to be a bit more lenient with it. We had one climbing along our balcony in our old house and that got trained much like climbing roses or something so it had the central stem and then offshoots got pruned back to that each year so it retained the overall length and covered the railings nicely. Definitely prune in winter when it's dormant (although removing leaves to allow the fruit to ripen is fine),

H

[Possum]

I would agree with the above. The main thing that I would add is that, if the vine wasn't pruned in the winter, it is likely to spread like mad once it starts growing in late spring/early summer. It's OK to trim the young green stems to keep it in check. You can even make a nice white wine out of the trimmings. It's called Vine Folly wine and is really nice.


The RHS website has lots of good clear advice and you don't have to be a member.

[Bert]

Thanks everyone , very helpful  . I know it's to late to prune now as it's in full leaf and the flower buds are appearing in abundance. Wasn't sure if it had to be pruned after fruiting or when dormant . Now I know, thanks again.