I usually wait until near the end of the dormant season which is late March or early April. My reasoning is that it the prune wounds will heal faster.

I'm not pruning any of my vines this year, because they're all young (planted last spring/summer) and I'm growing them all mostly for foliage to cover my fencing. Given these goals, is this the right move?

Faith, I think I would prune it to make it grow along your fence as best as possible. It's nearly impossible to over prune a grapevine as they respond vigorously to pruning. Remove any low growing canes and then prune to 2 canes growing in either direction along the fence would be my suggestions.

I pruned mine last weekend. OlD vines always produce lots o fruit when I do this but the birds get it all usually.

I have two different grapes that I put in 2 years ago. I have not pruned them and they did not do much last year. How vigorously should I prune them now? Down to about a foot tall? They each had a few vines around 4 feet long last year. Thanks for any advice.

Good news - third year (last summer) is when mine took off. I am no expert on pruning. What I did, right or wrong, was basically no pruning year one and two and then selected about four canes and cut the rest nearly to the ground for year 3.

When do grape vines usually leaf out around here?

An update for those with newer vines.

This will be the 4th growing season for my vine (in a disadvantaged location).

Last year, I had 7 or 8 bunches of grapes.

I took a look today and stopped counting flower bud bunches at 40. So, year 4 seems to the big change in production. My grape vine is a Somerset.

Jerry

Nice, Jerry! That looks wonderful.

I planted four vines last year. As of now, one is fully leafed out, two are cautiously sending out buds from the base of the plant, and one seems to have died. One of the cautious ones is at the base of my pergola, while the other three are all in raised beds with common conditions. So we'll see how they shape up.