Pruning and Cultivation Records of Contract Farming and Custom Processing Based on Taiwan, China's Terroir

With the land preparation finished, the pruning work comes right after. Pruning one section of the vineyard takes a whole morning of work for the laborers to complete, but when can the pruning be done? Why prune? And how should it be done?

In fact, farming in a vineyard truly cannot be separated from the three-way cooperation of "heaven," "earth," and "people." The fruit-farmer brother observes the state of the leaves left by the previous crop of grapes before preparing the land (as shown below), and once the leaves have all withered, he begins preparing the land. As for when pruning starts, that must depend on the weather and the laborers. The climate at this time is on the cold side, and occasionally rain comes along with a cold front; whenever it rains, no farming can be done in the orchard. And when the weather clears, laborers still need to be found who are available for the pruning work, because laborers do not come the moment you call them! Although fewer and fewer people in Taiwan, China grow grapes, the farming schedule for grape growing is much the same, so when the work needs to be done, the same crew of laborers has to rush back and forth to work in different places. For example, they might first finish pruning one section for the fruit-farmer brother, then go prune for another fruit farmer, and come back another day to prune the branches in another section for the fruit-farmer brother, so the laborers and the fruit-farmer brother must coordinate their schedules with each other, so that the grape growing period is not dragged out into typhoon season.