Unruly grape vine

[slingmama4]

Hello smart mamas,
We just moved into this house and to my surprise it has a huge unruly grape vine in the backyard. This thing has grown out of control with no pruning or training for the last 2yrs.

It has about 15 bunches of concord grapes growing and almost ripe for plucking right now!

My question is...
What do I need to do to train it? Is is possible to cut it back and begin training it over again or will it die if I do that? I know you arn't suppose to prune till early winter, but have no clue on how to prune or how much?

Right now it has vines that are touching the ground and are just everywhere. Help?
http://i178.photobucket.com/albums/w...resses0025.jpg
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[Carley]

Mmmm.. yum!!! I have no knowlegable advice to offer, sadly.

There is a renegade Concord that scrambles through a huge Big Leaf Maple & spills all over the alley just adjacent to our neighborhood's P-Patch. Nobody does anything to it. It grows from an abandon lot and takes over each year & produces TONS of grapes (that those in the know devour - all that we can reach).

I should mention I'm in Seattle, notoriously grape unfriendly. It's almost blackberryesque in nature.

I speculate, completely naive, that you might be able to do anything with that grape & it will grow and produce.

[Close2Me]

from what I know, only prune in Jan & Feb

[Alyantavid]

Just prune and train it where you want it to grow. We usually prune our grapes in the springtime.

Ok I just now looked at the pics and I'd build some place for it to grow. It doesn't look that wild, just like it needs some direction. We have 2 vines and have horizontal fencing about 3 feet apart. Each starts at one end and goes the length of the fencing and then up.

[mamadelbosque]

Just prune it back however much you want, not sure about when exactly you should prune, I'm sure you can look that up online. I know that after my dad pruned ours back a year or two big time, it produced a TON of grapes that next year!!

[lmonter]

You typically want to prune it when it's dormant so it can recover easier. So, either before winter or just as winter's ending in your area.

Ideally, you'd probably want to train it to go up. Because if the grapes are on the ground, you may have slug issues or the grapes will just be coated in mud/dirt/etc. So if you can figure out some sort of trellis for it to climb up (think at least 5 feet tall and then some), groovy. I have a 5yo grape vine that I got 3 gallons of grapes from last year, it's about 8 feet tall including all the twigs, and it just keeps going (so hubby's been working on an arbor for it to go across in addition to the up part it's already gotten down).

Those grapes in the photo don't look super close to being done though, at least not to me. Maybe 3-6 weeks away, depending on the variety.