How does your grape crop look this year?

My 12 vines looks over cropped. With the disgust of losing all my pears and plums to freezing temps and with all the fireblight, I’ve neglected to thin my grapes. Wonder if its too late to thin. Many of the grapes are now about the size of marbles. I did prune the grape vines pretty heavily back in February though. Probably will just mean more grapes for the birds. Oh well maybe next year!

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In my opinion the value of thinning decreases with time, but doesn’t go away. late the size might not change, but the fact is the plant has less fruit to put sugar in, so even late it should help brix.

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I have better luck pruning back the vine rather than thinning grapes. Like you I don’t have that kind of time.

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Thanks for the replies.

Last year I thinned all my grapes except for my one concord vine. I was going to use the grapes off of it just for juice / jelly so I decided that I did not care about the size of the grapes produced on it. It ripened most of the grapes on it but not all. I got about 8 quarts of juice of off it so it did okay. But about 20 more or less clusters just hung there and hung there without ever ripening up. Guess it was just trying to protect itself. Vine made it thru the winter okay this year but I did prune it heavier back in February.

I really don’t understand the grape vine physiology pertaining to the energy required to ripen its grapes.

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I only have three vines but they are getting really big especially the Concord, Hope and Red 'Swenson’are loaded with cluster this year. The last two vines are now four years old and finally producing something I can eat.

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Mine are all loaded with flower, but not big enough for thinning yet. Will thin soon.

Mine all leafed out then got hit by frost, so most of the leaves died. They are now putting out second growth. Hopefully they bloom soon and have enough time to ripen. This is why I like earlier ripening varieties like King of the North, Buffalo and Edelweiss. There is a better chance for that second crop to ripen in time. Last year was nice because even my second crop of Concords was able to ripen.