Almost in February so I am closer to the pruning time. I just want to make sure I am going to prune right, so I thought I would check in another time, offer some pictures and drop a possible bomb. Yes.. the neighbors adjacent to me would like to build a fence across their back yard, however the fence where my grape vines are hanging on the chicken wire would need to move out 3ft in the direction of the neighbors, so that they don't enclose my fruit trees in their yard (since I had planted my apple, cherry and peach trees on the outside of my fence). So now I really am worried I'm really going to screw up my grape production as the chicken wire has to come down and the grape 'trunks' and vine system needs to be swayed inward toward my back yard and trellised on wire. So here's what I have done so far. I freed the trunk vines out of the chicken wire (grew through it in places and would have had interrupted circulation in a couple years I suspect) and then tried to make sense out the tangled mess of vines with 1st, 2nd and 3rd year's growth (assuming I count the year I planted them as year 0.. like 7" tall sticks in 2007.. is that wrong?). The vines are more of less straightened and here's what I want to do.. The wood that is the lightest color at the tips of each arm is the summer 2010 wood, right? .. so I leave 30 buds on that for each arm I want to trellis, right? I bought 1/8" wire rope to thread through 2 sets of needle hooks I screwed in some 4"x8' posts I had already sunk in the ground. My idea is that I want to bend the vines from that back corner of the yard over to the right (as shown in these photos below). The arms of the vines will be attached to the two sets of wires that are 30" apart. Will this work? I realize I might be a bit unconventional, but my yard is truly cramped and if this works to get me good production, I'll be thrilled. My neighbor's house diagonally behind mine offers me no privacy, so I have thought of getting with my neighbor that has the welder in his garage, picking up some scrap metal and making a trellis to attach to the tops of the wooden posts, and then train some vines up there both for added production and screening of said neighbors. Nothing like them having a BBQ and looking uncomfortably in my back yard as the sweaty gardener has blackened hands and sweat pouring down his face. lol Here are the 'trunks' I have 2 plants, but all the compost and mulch I dumped over the last 4 years had caused the one plant on the left to split\root a few times looks like: From 01252011 This is just to the right of the trunks. Most of the vines are directed here, though I have a few really long ones on the right side out of the picture frame too. From 01252011 Here is where I am attaching the wire and directing those monstrous vines, so the wires will go from the trunks to the right and then make a right angle along the rear fence between those posts. From 01252011 Here is a shot of the whole setup: From 01252011 So please offer some recommendations of getting this thing in control without sacrificing much production. This will be the going into the 4th year of growth in the spring. Our lost frost date here is around May 5th I believe, so how long should I wait before I start pruning?

Don't take this personally but that's one ugly tree!! I'm not sure you can make a vase shaped tree out of this thing. But I'd whack off those old limbs that are below horizontal. You need newer limbs from the inner part of the tree that are trained out in the form you want. You can't take off all of last years growth each year. That is where the fruit should be. So you need a serious pruning back into the old wood and then have a plan to keep some of the resulting regrowth to fruit. By next spring I'd be able to walk around that tree and never take my hand off the trunk. Then I'd train some of the new growth out in a vase form. Add lots of summer pruning to hold down the number of upright watersprouts that won't be saved. But it does depend somewhat on how tall a tree you want in a few years. The shorter you want long run the more it needs cutting back now.

Ingrid, I have had that happen, or something similar. Usually when I prune a large rose hard and move it, it recovers in a year or two, maybe three. But occasionally it seems to permanently change its growth pattern. After I hard-pruned and moved New Dawn it became a largish shrub rose and never again a climber. The same thing happened with Phyllis Bide. I moved it from my front gate to the back fence because I thought it was going to eat the car. Now it is a rather modest shrub. Possibly the back fence is a bad spot, and gophers are pruning the roots as they come grow out of the gopher cages. However there are plenty of robust roses growing large nearby! I can't think of a scientific explanation, but my instinct tells me it is the hard pruning accompanied by a move, which by its nature also prunes the roots. A hard pruning with the rose left in place does not seem to have the same dwarfing effect in my experience. Rosefolly

They would not be Barn Swallows nesting in boxes. I don't know how far north and west you are. They would have to be either Tree Swallows or Violet Green Swallows. Mine allow me to walk right up to them when they are sitting on the box and they stay there. If I open the box when the female is incubating she just sits there and looks at me and I have touched her looking for eggs (didn't know she was in there) but I don't think they'd let me touch them outside the box. That would be very unusual.