John 15:2 - Pruning Produced Better Grapes

The Bible once again is shown to be correct: pruned grape vines produce better fruit. The Scripture is based on John 15:2 which states,

"Every branch in Me that does not bear fruit He takes away, and every branch that bears fruit He prunes, that it may bear more fruit." (John 15:2 NKJV)

In December 2012, I wrote a blog article entitled Grape Trellis Based on John 15:2. We had just finished building a two-trellis grape structure in the Gethsemane Prayer Garden. The intent was to prune the vines on one trellis and not prune the other trellis. It was our expectation that the ones that were pruned would "bear more fruit."

We planted four vines: two under the to-be-pruned trellis, and two under the not-to-be-pruned trellis. Otherwise, the vines were treated in an identical fashion.

The vines were too small to prune in January so I waited until May. I more aggressively pruned the vine on the left but the vine on the right was pruned less heavily: there were four small branches – I removed one of the four but unfortunately left another because it had some flowers.

The vine on the left was pruned more than the other

Conversely the vines that were not pruned are much smaller and one appears sickly:

These two vines were not pruned

To me, the real proof is in the size of the fruit:

The two on the left are from the pruned vines,
while the two on the right are from the not-pruned

The most heavily pruned vine produced large and very robust fruit. All of the other vines, including the one that was partially pruned, have small and weak appearing fruit:

Fruit from the most heavily pruned vine

Is the experiment conclusive? Well no, it is only indicative. We intend to repeat this experiment each year. Yet we already know the results for the Bible is always true: better fruit is produced when vine branches are pruned.