I have a friend who recently moved into a new house in Portland Oregon. She has a grape vine with about 1.5 feet of dead vine on top of a rickety arbor. She wants to clean away that dead stuff, rebuild the arbor and salvage the living vine. Any suggestions on how to do this?
Cut all of the dead canes off, cut all the way back to live wood. If the purpose is to repair the arbor your friend can cut the vine back to 2-3-4 feet tall if need be, make the needed repairs and then train the vines next year to grow up on the arbor again. Grapes can handle severe pruning in most locales. Sometimes, the vines will greatly benefit from a severe pruning, old vines (20-30 years old or more) especially. Jim
