GROW YOUR OWN GRAPES

Image Gallery [1] From January to March, the grape cuttings are stored head down in a hole. [2] Bundles of wintered?over cuttings?still tied and tagged?are ready for spring planting. [3] Future fruit producers are set out in a nursery row in early April. [4] A 2-1/2-year-old grapevine in fine health. PHOTOS BY THE AUTHOR

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If you've always wanted a vineyard of your own, January's the month to get it started... with (often free-for-the-trimmin') grape cuttings!

by GORDON TILLOTSON

Our Oklahoma farmstead has a warm, gentle slope—just to the south side of the house—where my wife Diane and I had, from the day we moved in, dreamed of building a grape arbor. Unfortunately, although we knew we wanted a "backyard vineyard", we didn't have the faintest idea how to begin such a project. Then one day—quite by accident—we noticed a small card tacked to the bulletin board at the County Agricultural Extension Service office: "Oklahoma Grape Growers Association meeting, second Wednesday of every month".

You can bet we went out of our way to attend the next meeting—and we learned a lot there, too—but, more important, we met Walter Riggs ... one of the local grape growers. I asked him if he had any grapevines for sale.

"Oh no!" Walt exclaimed. "I never sell my plants. But I'll tell you what ... if you come to see me in January, I'll give you as many cuttings as you want. Heck," he chuckled, "I'll even show you how to prune the vines!"

DO YOUR HOMEWORK

In the course of the next two months, I just about emptied my local library's shelves of books on every facet of grape culture: taking cuttings, soil management, planting, grafting, pruning ... even winemaking. In the process, I learned that grapes fall into four principal categories.

Vitis labrusca: the American or Fox-type grape, grown mainly east of the Rockies and in the Great Lakes region of the U.S. and Canada. (The familiar Concord grape is the leading and typical variety of this species.)

Vitis vinifera: the "Old World" grape, grown principally in California, Arizona, and lower Texas.

Vitis rotundifolia: found mostly in the south Atlantic and Gulf states. This species includes the muscadine and scuppernong varieties.

Vitis riparia: the "offspring" of the wild grape, and the most. widely distributed of any American species. It's highly resistant to phylloxera, a small insect that feeds on the roots of the grapevine.

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