I’ve got a spot where I’m planting some grapes. It’s about 75 feet long. I’m trying to decide on a trellis design. Does anyone have any personal experiences with either the angled posts or the H brace? Pros and cons other than cost differences. The only supplies I currently have is the high tensile wire.
I was leaning toward the H brace, just because I think it looks a little nicer. The grapes are already planted, but still have some room for a few new varieties if I want. I’m planning on cane pruning to a four arm or umbrella kniffin.
95% of commercial vineyards in my area use ground anchors. The main argument is that all end posts eventually need to be replaced and the anchor assembly is simpler to take apart. If you have particularly rocky soil anchors may be more forgiving (able to punch through more). So, for your situation either should work fine.
That’s about standard but if you can drive them 3 feet go for it. In the commercial world panels (distance between posts) are 20-26 feet long. So in your 75 foot row you might want to add a couple skinnier line posts, or just t-posts.
Thanks, I’ll have to dig and tamp. Another reason I was thinking of the H configuration. I have quite a few 3"x8’ posts around from other projects. Those should work perfect in between.
For the ground anchor we selected the heavy duty ground anchor
The website shows the anchor being knocked with petrol knocker. You have to use a special mandrel (drive rod), and as we are on soft disturbed ground, we went for the 1m deep option. After the 1st ten, it got harder and harder, its not as easy as it looks.
But they certainly work well. The tensioning is a problem, as the tensioning tool handles are not long enough. But a short piece of scaffold pole on each handle got over the problem. I must be getting older and weak as my son found it OK to tension.
Nice. I know nothing of zone 4 grapes other than Marquette. And I would only recommend that if you’re thinking of making wine, clusters are too small for much else I’d think. Can stay very high in TA even as brix skyrocket too.
I’m literally drawing up my trellis design and I’m also going with H-brace. My reason is I live on a 1/4 acre residential lot and I don’t have room for the end anchors and wires. I’d be tripping over them jait moving around my yard.
I’m trying to decide if I want to use a foam product (Fast 2k) for at least the end posts for better lateral strength than tamped earth.
Are you going for curtain or vertical shoot positioning?
Where you are you are likely growing a known grape variety with a lot of information out there on training, fruiting bunch count per vine, spacing, etc.
I’m flying blind (growing blind I guess) as I am in the deep south in high PD-land growing a PD resistant cultivar that hasn’t caught on yet (Errante Noir). 7 vines, 42 foot row end post to end post.
I’m just going to pick something and give it a go. At least between spur and cane pruning you can actually change the system from one year to the next if the results aren’t what you want.
The post has a 4 foot long crosspiece with holes for wires at the ends. The angle brace is set into the ground against a steel plate so that it stays in place and is wired in place against the post. I drove a 30 inch long piece of rebar in at an angle above the flap on the post. The result is a fully braced and supported trellis for muscadines. I would modify this if growing other grape species.
As best I can tell you back braced the end post in the direction of the trellis wire right? Assume the trellis runs left in the first photo.
The second photo is hard to see. You used a plate to increase surface area that spreads the tension force transmitted along the diagonal brace over a larger area so it doesn’t sink into the ground.
Makes sense. I like it.
At this moment I still think I will go with round treated wooden fence posts (farm fence) and H-brace on each end. It works for me, though it will probably be beefier than it needs to be for only 7 vines and about 46 feet length of wire.
Here’s a guy with similar thoughts. It’s funny how as many photos and videos of row end support I looked at, once you described yours I found a video with something similar right away.
His idea would interfere with the last vine on my rows though.
My trellis is specific for muscadines. It has 2 horizontal wires 4 feet apart on the cross-arm. Muscadines loaded with fruit can weigh 300 or more pounds per plant. With 5 plants in each row, I’m looking at 1500 pounds of fruit/vine total. All of that weight pulls on the end posts which can be pulled out of the ground by leverage against the angle brace. For this reason, I drive a piece of rebar in at an angle above the soil plate on the end t-posts. It prevents the end post from being levered out of the ground. In years past, I used vertical trellis similar to the picture you found. I found serious problems when growing muscadines on vertical trellis so converted to horizontal trellis. My trellis is 6 feet above the ground. I can mow under my trellis and I can stand and pick from under the trellis. I hate bending over to pick grapes! Consider carefully how you will maintain the vines and the trellis long term. My system is very close to ideal for a home owner growing muscadines. It would be a problem for commercial systems using machine pruning.
