GROW YOUR OWN GRAPES

Article Tools

Image Gallery

Print

E-mail

Comments

RSS

CARE FOR YOUR CUTTINGS

Once we arrived back at our garden, we tagged the bundles, buried each of 'em heads-down in a 15-inch-deep hole (to keep them cool and dormant), and marked the locations with stakes.

Then, at the end of March (1974), we dug our cuttings up and—after careful sorting and selecting—set out 50 sprigs in our prepared nursery bed. We placed the sticks in a shallow trench—at an angle, so they'd catch the sun-covered the bottom halves, and were careful to leave two buds (per shoot) above the ground. (That way, if one bud didn't produce, there was always a second chance.)

When spring rolled around again (1975), we ended up with 20 vines to set out and a dozen to share with our neighbors. (According to one grape authority, a 50% Survival rate from cuttings is considered good, so we were really fortunate to have done so we] I.)

LAY OUT YOUR VINEYARD

We laid out our grape arbor as Walt Riggs had taught us ... digging the holes (which would "house" our now rooted vines) three feet deep and ten feet apart. Since we have a lot of red clay in our earth, we filled the bottom of each pit with good topsoil ... to make it easier for our vines to get started. Carefully, we spread the roots of the young plants over the rich earth and gently packed more topsoil around them.

At that point, we went our own way a little. We followed the topsoil with alternate layers of old hay, a handful of wood ash, and two handfuls of rock phosphate. Just before we put on the last layer of hay, I worked in a shovelful of well-rotted cow manure. (Most grape growers in our area shy away from fertilizing. They tend to feel that the vines produce better grapes by having to work at it.) All through the summer and fall of that second season and the third, we cleared the new arbor of weeds by rototillingjust enough to break the soil—and kept the vines well mulched with spoiled hay.

PRUNE CAREFULLY

The new year arrived (January 1976), and it was time to prune. We picked out two lower and two upper canes on the main trunks, trimmed them back to 10 buds each, and cut off the rest of the growth.

And—since we didn't want to run into trouble with vine training later on—we set the posts and strung the wire. (Now our grape patch was starting to look like areal vineyard!)

Sure enough, the first tiny fruit clusters appeared that fall ... but we decided to pinch them back, and let the vines mature for one more year.

In January 1977 we again selected the four strongest and healthiest canes ... and this time (as we'd done at Walt's), we cut them back to 15 buds each before removing all the other growth.

RSS | Comments | E-mail | Print