Pruning for the 2025 Growing season

Work has been going on behind the scenes at Oswald Vineyard in the winery with barreling and bottling wine. Now it is time for vineyard work! The Oswald family is gearing up to start pruning for the 2025 growing season.

Pruning for the 2025 Growing season steps

The first step, since we put up the hail netting, is to lower the nets. This is important so the Pellenc machine and people can get to the vines! This may not sound like a big deal but with 43 1/3 acres it takes time.

John, Julian, Christoph and Zane have been enjoying the unseasonably warm weather for this step of the pruning process. Normally, temperatures are freezing or just above freezing. But this year, we are enjoying highs in the 80’sF!

The vine canopy has grown up and out of the top of the nets and in some cases, are tangled in the nets. Untangling the vines takes more time, but after all, we want to do all we can to prevent tearing the netting.

Once the nets are lowered, the vines are exposed and John swiches to the Pellenc. He drives the Pellenc machine with the pre-pruner attachment, down each row pre-pruning or rough cutting last years growth off.

We started using the Pellenc machine in 2016 and you can read the detailed description of how it works in Pre-pruning the Vineyard 2017.

The pre-pruner cuts and chews up the excess vines from last year’s growth. This makes what is left, much more manageable – each vine is easier to get to. It is also easier to see what actually needs to be done as far as hand pruning.

Pruning steps to come

The next step will be to switch out the pre-pruner for the precision pruner attachment on the Pellenc machine to get a more closely pruned vine.

The final step will be handpruning each vine with the optimal number of buds on each arm for good quality grapes to make delicious wines.