The 4-Arm KniffinTraining System for Grapevines - Grape Video #15

mr. William Kniffin a grape grower in the Hudson Valley region of New York State devised a training system for grapevines that was used extensively for more than a half a century today we call it the forearm Kniffin training system for grapevines and what was it about this training system that was so revolutionary well here is a schematic Oh forearm Kniffin and we can see that there are renewal zones at about 42 inches above height in this schematic where we have canes placed out a wire in both directions with renewal Spurs just below those canes and we have another renewal zone right at the top of the trellis canes going out in both directions with renewal Spurs below those now this was originally called true kniffen or for cane Kniffin today we call it forearm Kniffin even though it really doesn't involve arms as much as canes out wires so what was so revolutionary about forearm nephron training well here's the high renewal training system that was one of the grapevine training systems used extensively before mr. Kniffin came up with forearm Kniffin and if we look at this closely we can see that the renewal zone is only 18 inches off the ground and from that renewal zone a cane is trained out each direction on an 18 inch wire and shoots that come from that cane are then positioned upwards on the trellis similarly another training system of the day before for our Kniffin was called horizontal arm spur training and it involved a cord on out a wire 18 inches off the ground and there were two to three node spurs on that cord on that gave rise to chutes that grew up vertically on the trellis so that low renewal zone all along that cordon was really low compared to the innovation of forearm kniffen while the innovation of forearm Kniffin was that it placed its renewal zones much higher on the trellis than those old training systems with renewal zones at the mid height and right at the top of the trellis and this led to increased fruitfulness of those renewal zones because they were in the sunlight better than those old training systems with low renewal zones so this was so innovative that this system was very very prevalent for decades and decades and way into the 20th century well there were lots of variations of forearm Kniffin this is a graphic representation of six arm Kniffin and there were eight arm Tiffin's and ten arm if ins to because back in the day grapevines were very weak and small generally because there was poor weed control we didn't have fertilization practices like we do today and so in order to get a fair amount of growth distributed vertically on the trellis we added more arms and made four six eight hour missions here's a picture of six arm Kniffin in a Canadian vineyard and this was very popular and perhaps still is today don't really know on the heavier clay soils in the Ontario province area because of the heavy clay soils fine growth as weak as you can see in order to get some vertical distribution of growth many growers used six-armed Kniffin training well let's talk advantages and disadvantages of four-armed riffin it is a simple system to establish and maintain and so it is appealing to growers to look at the system and say ok maybe I should go with that and it works well with small to medium sized vines no problem there it's compatible with vines that experience moderate winter injury because you can work your way around renewing trunks and still have the arms ready to fill the trellis wires each year well the disadvantages of four-armed riffin is that it's not mechanized ball and that's involved with its requirement of long cane pruning and annual time that must be done every year with this system and it's not compatible with canopy management practices of shoe positioning and leaf removal that are so important to us in modern viticulture and it's not suitable for large vines and we're going to dwell on that for just a minute this is a big bushy Cabernet Franc vine that has been trained to forearm Kniffin if we look underneath we can see that the fruit is buried in the shade that it does not have the benefit of good sunlight exposure on the fruit and as is typical I'll form Kniffin with large fines there is a reduced fruitfulness on those lower arms so you can see most of the fruit is at the top of the trellis anyway and the arms down lower on the trellis enlarged vines become increasingly shaded and that's really what led to the demise of the popularity of forearm Kniffin because those lower arms just didn't pull their weight anymore actually what forearm iffen evolved to was this does it look familiar this was originally called - arm Kniffin and it was the starting point from Briella Kniffin that we've already presented in an earlier video where the renewal zone is very near to the top of the trellis why because as vine size got larger the lower arms on forearm iffen just didn't perform well so eventually the whole renewal zone moved up higher and higher on the trellis and it started with this two arm kniffen and then variations of that became umbrella Kniffin so if we go back to the schematic and we look at this we want to say that this is really not a system that has widespread utilization today in summary then the advantages of forearm riffin include a simple system to establish and maintain it works well with small to medium sized vines it's compatible with vines that experience moderate winter injury the disadvantages include that it's not mechanize abaut that it requires long cane pruning and annual time that it's not compatible with canopy management practices of shoe positioning and leaf removal and it's not suitable at all for large vines well there you have it folks that's the forearm Kniffin training system which might be good for a backyard grower but for most commercial growers we would not recommend this training system today until next time happy grape growing

Channel: Tom

Views: 169,722

Rating: 4.794621 out of 5

Keywords: grape + grapevine + Kniffin + training system + William Kniffin + 4-arm Kniffin, Grapevine Training System, Vitis (Organism Classification)

Id: kf_M_RVWpC0

Length: 9min 14sec (554 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 28 2014