Mike,
The fruitless shoots are not the same as laterals. Laterals come off
the same shoot and are the newest growth on the shoot. I've read the
exact opposite about carbohydrate production. I thought one of the
reasons for hedging was to induce laterals just before veraison. I'm
not sure how a successful grower would have the time to pinch off all
the laterals. I could see removing the fruitless shoots. I got 70
gallons on 95 vines last year at 16 brix. If I was going to remove
anything I'd lessen the fruit. I left the laterals because there was
plenty of room in the canopy for them. I also leave the fruitless
shoots but I may remove them this year I don't know. Why fix what
isn't broke. I grow my vines on VERY sandy soil but I mulch them and
they seem healty. Almost ALL SCIENTIFIC evidence about grapevines
favors NOT removing leaves unless absolutely necessary. I would leave
the laterals if I were you.
Let the vines do what they have naturally done for millions of years.
They just need to be pruned well and adjusted I'm not a big fan of
interfering with them once they start growing. There must be a reason
for lateral growth and I've read it's to increase leaves to ripen the
fruit.

Bob


MikeMTM > wrote in message ws.com>...
> bob wrote:
> > Mike,
> >
> > I was told that laterals are good to keep if at all possible because
> > of their sugar producing potential. Suckering is just making sure the
> > suckers don't interfere with the other growth. You could pull them off
> > in July or cut them back to one bud and use them every year. . Just
> > make sure the vine can heal itself before winter. As far as the 2003
> > vintage. I wouldn't say it was a disaster. I left the must on the
> > skins for only 3 days and put it through MLF. I think it has potential
> > believe it or not. Maybe a 10% blend with the 2002 vintage. I think
> > it's going to be a light enjoyable wine. How did the grapes that hung
> > until Nov. get to 20 brix??? I thought once the leaves were gone the
> > grapes don't increase in sugar content?
> >
> > Bob
>
>
> Bob,
>
> I remove laterals for several reasons:
>
> One, That's what I was taught by a successful pro grower.
>
> Two, I recall reading (somewhere) that laterals actually contribute very
> little carbohydrate to the bunches; it goes into new growth. It seems
> they can actually be a drain on the vine, at the expense of the fruit. I
> suspect this might be less true in a very sunny climate.
>
> Three, on a vigorous site, the amount of growth produced by the dense
> laterals is really counterproductive in that the inner leaves (3 deep or
> more), get virtually no sunlight and can't contribute to the fruit.
> Instead, the vine uses its share of sunlight to produce more and more
> new growth, perhaps to the point of not being fully hardened off for
> winter. Jackson & Schuster touch of this point in "The Production of
> Grapes and Wine in Cool Climates", pg. 79:
>
> "...once the bunch of grapes rapidly expands, nutrients are diverted
> from the apex to the cluster and shoot growth slows down or stops.
> Shoots with no clusters grow the longest, they cause congestion and
> because there are no grapes to absorb the photosynthates produced by the
> leaves, the excess is diverted to the rest of the plant, including the
> roots. This excess promotes further vigour and compounds the problem.
> The solution is for the grower to remove shoots with no crop or very
> little crop before they are 20-30 cm long. Vigorous vines so treated can
> often become easily controlled and yield and quality can both be improved."
>
> I think they are mostly talking about non-bearing shoots, but I think it
> is largely the same thing. I know that my vines got overgrown to the
> point of inner leaves turning yellow when I didn't stay on top of the
> laterals.
>
> I still like the idea of using basal suckers to slow down early growth.
> Guess I ought to try it.
>
> 2003 was a horrible crop for me. I harvested late, hoping to raise the
> Brix, but from about 50 vines, I got a whopping 85 pounds of fruit. I
> expected over 500#. It didn't help that the birds got every bit of Baco
> overnight, before I got the netting up. The reds yielded about 3 gal of
> a passable blend, but the whites yielded only about 1 1/2 gal of
> wretched stuff. Not a lot to show for my efforts, but that's farming.
>
> The reason the few Chambourcin clusters raised their Brix so late in the
> season had nothing to do with ripening, but rather with dehydration. By
> that point they looked a little ratty, but still better than the whites.
> I don't know how a wine made solely from them would have turned out.