One stem, trunk, is good but several will work just as well. In your climate winter kill shouldn't be an issue so I'd probably go one trunk. Once the vine is on top the system you use is dependent on how much area needs coverage vs how much the canes grow each year. The simplest system is to prune like you would a normal vine. Head off your trunk in the middle of the arbor. Hopefully you then get at least 4 canes off the head. Position as needed for coverage. Those canes bear the next year. The following winter prune back as much as possible while still retaining 4 new canes for fruit the next year. The difference between normal and on top of arbor is how the canes are positioned. Normal they run down wires in two directions. On the arbor the canes are positioned so new growth covers area needed. They may pinwheel out from the head. You might have two heads depending on shape of arbor and area needing coverage. Once you get the feel for it pruning grapes is a lot easier than describing it.

I received the Swensen Red last week and planted it by the second post. Some red potatoes that I had thought died out last year by this post have come back. Anyhow the first grape is making some progress climbing up to the top From 06042014

Thank you all for the encouraging words!!! I can't wait for the new look that my arbor will give to this area once it is completed and I replace the daylilies that I dug up and Cramoisi forgives me for cutting her branches out of the way. I have mixed feelings about the way a garden continuosly changes...sometimes the changing views evaporate what we so loved to look at. We have a large lot (7/8 acre) so I have divided the garden area into several "garden rooms",using fence sections, trellising,etc. If you are interested, you can view some of my garden photos using the following link. Unfortunately my Canon point and shoot doesn't do justice to the beauty of roses. Thank you all again for your wonderful input! Molly https://picasaweb.google.com/jardineratx/GardenRooms?authuser=0amp;authkey=Gv1sRgCNz6maCQoZfgCg&feat=directlink

Howdy. I've just this year become interested in growing grapes, bought a couple of plants, put up posts and wires for support for a four-arm system. I've read everything I could find on the web about pruning, and will be picking up a couple of good books on the topic before long, but in the meantime, I still don't quite understand something. If I understand correctly, you choose a cane to train on the wire for fruiting, then dormant prune next late winter/early spring, leaving enough buds for a new fruiting cane and a couple of extra buds for renewal spurs. When they start to grow, you select one cane for fruiting, train it on the wire, and cut back the others, leaving one spur with a couple of buds for renewal. Do you let those extra buds grow canes in the meantime? Do you allow them to grow and train them on the wires as well? And allow them to flower and set fruit? This wouldn't make sense because the "other" cane is called the fruiting cane. If not, what do you do about the buds sprouting? Cut off the sprouts? Doesn't that interfere with saving those buds for the next year's fruiting canes? There's something I'm not getting here. None of the descriptions say what those renewal spurs do with themselves while the "other" cane is doing its fruiting, if you know what I mean. They're just shown in drawings or photos just sitting there, little stubs with a couple of buds, but we know that's not what's going to happen, right? They're going to want to grow. I'm still at the point where I'm training the vines up the the second wire this year, so I have some time to figure it out and do more studying, but this is bugging me. If anyone can clear this up for me, I'd really appreciate it. TIA Jo