Organic Canopy Management Fruit

The term 'canopy management' refers to the training and organizing of the green shoots and leaves during the summer. Most training systems will require some handwork doing shoot positioning and deleafing around the bunches during the growing season. In addition, the green shoots will need cutting just above the height of the top wire 'topping' in late summer to prevent them becoming too long and then flopping over and shading the grapes.

The world's leading expert on canopy management, the Australian Richard Smart, whom I had the privilege to hear speak at the Thames Valley Vineyard in about 1990, wrote a book called Sunlight into Wine. This title neatly a sum up the objectives of the vine grower, whose task it is to ensure that the leaves of the vine capture sufficient energy from the sunlight to develop and ripen an adequate crop of fruit. To achieve this, it is important to have a good leaf to fruit ratio. Too much fruit and not enough leaves will mean the fruit will not ripen. Too many leaves and not enough fruit means too little yield.

Through his experimentation, Smart discovered that 80 per cent of the sunlight falling directly onto a leaf is absorbed by that leaf. A leaf situated in the shade behind that leaf will absorb less than 10 per cent of the remaining light and a leaf behind two leaves will, as far as the vine is concerned, be virtually 'in the dark'. It is clear therefore, that to achieve maximum photosynthesis of light energy the canopy of the vine should be open and airy and not congested or dense. From the point of view of disease prevention it is also important to achieve an 'open' canopy. Powdery mildew, in particular, will develop and thrive in 'leaf balls', which are dense, compacted areas of the canopy. In addition, spray droplets will not penetrate inside such canopies. I have seen some dense canopies on a Geneva double curtain system where the leaves were white through lack of light and the grapes were full of botrytis because of poor ventilation.

Each cane needs about ten to twelve leaves in order to ripen properly the two to three bunches of grapes growing on it. This means it needs to be about a metre or so in length. Once it has reached this length it can be 'topped'. This will encourage side shoots to develop — their young leaves are very useful in increasing the sugar levels in the ripening grapes. Once the grapes have developed to small pea size, one or two of the older leaves around.

For vines that are cut back to the graft during the first winter, and where a low or intermediate height training system is chosen, then two canes can be left to grow during the second summer. In the following winter the straightest of these is chosen to form the trunk and cut to the appropriate height (three buds above the height of the proposed trunk — Guyot system). The other cane can be tied onto the wire to produce the first fruit during the third summer. This cane will then be removed at the graft during the third year's pruning and the two canes that grew from the two buds at the top of the trunk trained to provide fruit in the fourth year.

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