A day working in the Vineyard...and what's up with the new Side By Side?

hey there folks this is Josh Stoney Ridge farmer welcome back to the farm today we're going to be having a little bit of fun in the grape vineyard here so this is my neighbor's grape vineyard we've worked out a deal where I get the grapes if I trim the grapes so it's a pretty cool deal we've got set up here so today we're going to take all this mess which we cut back last year there'll be a link to that video at the end of this video but we're gonna take all this growth that came out last year and we're going to cut it back and these are muscadine grapes we're gonna show you exactly how I trim the grapes back to get optimal fruit production this year in the vineyard alright [Music] alright folks if this is your first time to the Stoney Ridge farm channel welcome to the YouTube channel please pound that like button consider subscribing to the channel we do everything rural lifestyle here on the Stoney Ridge and we do some made-in-america stuff some factory tours some real fun stuff with tractors just all kinds of rural lifestyle stuff so what we're going to be doing here today is taking back this huge amount of growth that occurred last year and what we did is we took these lateral vines the main vines and we cut them all the way back and when we basically left what you call a cordon which is about a thumb sized sprig that shoots out and basically all of the sprouts come from there so what we're going to do today is we're going to take it back to where we have basically a cordon or I call it a sprig that's just what I call it around here so we're gonna take it back to the cordon we're gonna leave either one or two or three sprouts on there with two buds each and that's how we're going to take these back this is an overwhelming task when you look at it like from afar but as you get in here and you start working you're just ripping through this and getting rid of all this extra vine that you have right here if you leave this next year it's going to be three times as much and you're not going to have a very good crop this coming year so the fruit comes from these vines on the new growth and what we want to do is prune back to where we get a manageable amount of new growth instead of letting it go crazy and having just an absolute mess and a poor crop and little bitty berries about that big we want great big fat muscadine grapes so let's get busy let's get started all right before we get started let's talk a little bit about the goal here so the goal is to produce larger berries the goal here is to produce a manageable amount of fruit the goal is to produce a plant that pushes energy into making fruit not into making leaves so what we're doing here is taking off all this material that will not produce fruit this year the only part that will produce fruit is out beyond the end of the stem so what we're going to do is stimulate growth with winter pruning now when you're pruning fruit trees the same thing if you cut back your trees in the winter time you're cutting back for growth if you're cutting back your trees in the summertime then you're cutting back to shrink the size of the tree now we're going to take these way back I'm going give you a little bit of a time-lapse and then I'll pull you in on some of these cordon so that you can see exactly what to do with your grapes or so that you can learn if you just want the knowledge okay so we've gone from unmanageable disaster and again this is one year's growth to manageable disaster so you can see I've taken out all the sprigs in there all laying on the ground right here and that's all last year's growth we're going to get you some close-ups and show you exactly what we're going to do here to trim off each one of these to get optimum fruit production welcome to the jungle in here man there is just tons of stuff I've got a piece of paper in my hand right here we've got everything drawn out for you so that you'll understand now you can see this jumbled mess right here when we get done it will not be a jumbled mess but Nature has a way of growing that's better than what we do so in other words it's not going to be absolutely uniform all the way through here and we're not in Napa Valley we're in North Carolina so this is a muscadine vine let me show you a little diagram here so right here is the trunk it's down here below us that is your trunk these are little Spurs that come off of the trunk or suckers and we want to cut those off okay the trunk splits into two core Don's and you'll see that here in just a second you've probably already seen it and the core Don's have little Spurs that stick up so those are your fruiting Spurs that's what we have right here a mess a jumbled mess of fruiting spurs and that's what we're going to fix and we're gonna take our fruiting spurs right here and we'll flip over and then we have our Spurs with buds so we're going to take our fruiting spurs and we're going to cut them back to where they have about two buds apiece and that will allow for optimum fruit production on this vine pretty cool I hope you guys are learning something here it's pretty fun to do this I enjoy getting outside so here we are this looks like a little bit of a disaster but it won't be in just a second so we talked about our fruiting spurs fruiting Spurs this is a fruiting spur this is a bud and this is a bud there are two buds right here so we're gonna cut this guy right there now you can see their Spurs that are sticking up this is old this is last year's or two years agos growth okay and you can tell because the bark looks a little bit darker brown where this is a little bit lighter brown we cut these way back last year way way back so all we have is pretty much new growth to cutbacks we're gonna leave a bud here and a blood here and we're also gonna leave buds right here so let me get my shears and again we're shooting for a spur with a couple Bloods on it so right here is a bud right here is a bud and we're going to go right beyond that bud and snip it off just that simple you see this this is a mess it's in the way we'll get rid of that now you can see two buds here we've got a spot that's not going to have any growth it's old Deadwood we're gonna get rid of that we've got two buds here one bud here and one bud here so we go just beyond that and get rid of that one okay now you can see these guys growing out if they're on the bottom side then they are not desirable but you can see these are not all the way on the bottom so they will produce fruit we're going to leave them for this year we're gonna leave two buds again one bud here one bud here we've got it here again we're gonna leave two buds one bud here one bud here we're gonna go back out do it again one buddy here one bud here now you can see here's a vine kind of wrapped around all the way up here we're gonna get rid of that I'm gonna pull that guy out and trap right there it is so that Lin bye-bye bye-bye to that limb and that one is coming out right here so we're going to cut back to two buds there so we're going to go all the way down this is just a like a foot and a half section that we're working with right here but we're going to go all the way down the entire grapevine right here and we're going to cut them back just like that so it's all nice and neat and compact okay what's gonna happen here is those buds will produce limbs again lateral limbs those lateral limbs will be the fruiting limbs and they'll also produce leaves so that they can soak up some of the sunshine take photosynthesis and make fruit so they take sugar from the ground and from the air and they make fruit so that's what we're doing you can see I've got my work cut out for me but that's how it works when we get done here we'll go to a vine that I haven't touched and we'll go to a vine that I have touched and we'll kind of give you guys an idea of what it looks like when we're completely done we haven't touched this one yet we're going to go ahead and work down fine this one vine is probably a hundred and ten feet something like that there are three plants right here three trunks coming up to six cord ons and all these little stubs that are coming up right here these Spurs that are going to be our fruiting Spurs now let's look at problem areas like this huge mess right here so it seems overwhelming when you first get in here let's get that guy out of the way it seems overwhelming when you first get in here but it's not once you start trimming once you start working it's very therapeutic and it's just a great time so we'll just get back in here again leave two buds on these and we'll cut them off so see this guy he's coming out this is gonna be a growth spurt one two buds we're cutting him back this one's in the way now there's a little bit of a rule and I've learned this by reading up and studying you want about the width of your hand between buds between spurs or fruiting spurs so you want to make sure that they're not too compact they're not too close together on this main cordon okay so about the width of your hand is about where you need to judge this from this year we'll get sprouts all over the place on this thing so you got to judge it and you got to cut it back year after year after year in the wintertime let's get the snipping okay now if you got stuff that's too close together we've got one on the very bottom right here I'll show you let's angle that camera down a little bit so we've got one coming out of the bottom we don't want it coming out of the bottom we want to get rid of that one so we'll take him and snip him off completely get rid of that guy they've got a little crowded area right here so we want to take out probably half of that crowded area get in here with our snips and snip them out again you only want two fruiting buds okay you want an optimal fruit production here there we go so we'll get rid of these guys right here there we go two fruiting buds and we got rid of that mess all of this mess all this disaster will be gone very very shortly it's very surprising how fast it you can get through a grapevine there we go very nice don't worry if you cut too much off it'll grow back these things will grow vigorously where we once had a disaster now we've got a nice neat grapevine well guys I've got my work cut out for me today I hope you enjoyed this little video I hope you will come back and see me here again on the Stoney Ridge farm channel I've got to finish up this vine we're going to go ahead and get three or four vines done today the whole thing I hope so we've got quite a bit of work to do I'm gonna say bye for now but thanks a lot for joining me here on the Stoney Ridge guys by the way that is a Cub Cadet Challenger 750 EPS that's what that is EPS stands for electronic power steering that's something that we're trying out here on the farm a lot of folks have been asking about it so that's what it is thanks a lot guys we'll see you next time on the Stoney rage be sure you pound that like button subscribe to the channel I hope to see you again alright [Music] sweet and some way supposed to be Stone Tyrion there is the before that's what it looks like before and this is the after so it looks pretty well skinned up but you can see these are the sprigs with the buds on them right here again I call them sprigs I guess you call them Spurs those are your fruiting Spurs with the buds on them again we're gonna take this one all the way back down just like we did this guy right here awesome