North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

["Lon J. Rombough" <lonrom@hevanet.com>]

If the grape flower clusters set fruit, remove them or they will take energy the vine needs to harden it's wood.  
Interestingly, grapes in the tropics are deliberately defoliated to force them into dormancy.  Then they are pruned, fertilized, and watered.  That makes them break bud, bloom, and set a new crop.  Two, and sometimes more crops per year can be produced this way.
-Lon Rombough
NEW grape pruning video: http://www.bunchgrapes.com/dvd.html View a short, low resolution clip here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Q58zFY0B1M
Grapes, writing, consulting, my book, The Grape Grower, at http://www.bunchgrapes.com  Winner of the Garden Writers Association "Best Talent in Writing" award for 2003. 
A video about The Grape Grower : http://cookingupastory.com/index.php/2008/04/18/the-grape-grower/
On Aug 27, 2009, at 7:39 PM, Mark and Alisha Fehringer wrote:

Hi,
 
We received a major hailstorm on August 8 which defoliated grapes to the tune of 65-95% leaf loss.  It also caused major damage to young trees and new grafts.  The grapes are regrowing nicely from the leaf node buds.  However, these are the buds that would have grown out next spring, and so are throwing out flower clusters with the new shoots.  Will picking these flower clusters off the vines help them harden off, or is it late enough in the season that it won't matter?  Our 'average' first frost is in the first week of October.  I am also seeing T-budded trees push out the new bud due to the damage, but I don't see that anything can be done for them.
 
Thanks,
 
Mark
Northeast Colorado,  4500' elevation, z 4._______________________________________________
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