MONDAY IN THE VINEYARD SERIES
Vines have a common framework, divided into four parts: the green parts or canopy, one-year-old wood, permanent wood, and roots.
1. Roots
Roots play essential roles in the vine's stability and the uptake of water and nutrients. They store carbohydrates and produce hormones crucial for vine growth and grape ripening. Typically, vines are grafted onto rootstocks. While most vine roots are concentrated within the top 50 cm of soil, some can extend over six meters deep. The distribution of the main root framework is influenced by soil properties, irrigation, cultivation, and rootstock type. Water and nutrients are absorbed at the actively growing root tips.
2. Permanent Wood
Permanent Wood sections of the vine, like the trunk, stick around for more than a year. Depending on pruning and training choices, some vines also have horizontal arms called cordons. The trunk and cordons serve as support structures for the vine and facilitate the transportation of water, solutes, carbohydrates, and nutrients between different vine components.
3. One-Year-Old Wood
One-Year-Old Wood consists of the shoots from the previous season that weren't pruned. The quantity of one-year-old wood depends on how grape growers prune and train the vine. It plays a vital role in supporting the compound buds that will produce shoots in the next growing season. Whether it becomes a cane or a spur depends on the vine pruning method employed.
4. Canopy
The Green Parts, also called Canopy, consist of shoots and all of their major
structures, which are buds, leaves, lateral shoots, tendrils and inflorescences and later grape bunches.
If you want to know more about Canopy, Stay tuned, next Monday I will publish a new article with many interesting facts on the vine's green parts.
Nicky