I harvested the grapes from my one vine that produced this year since they were splitting from all the recent rain and it turned into a wasp buffet. About half of them were salvageable and got about 8lbs of usable grapes. However, this vine was supposed to be reliance but I’m pretty sure it’s not. Hopefully you all can help identify it for me.
The vine was purchased from stark bros two years ago. The vine is very vigorous, more vigorous than the others I have (somerset, st theresa, and thomcord). Also judging by winter injury/dieback the vine is hardier than the others too.
The grapes are green, slipskin, and have around 3 very large seeds per grape. I’m not sure if they were optimally ripe, as the cracking and wasps forced my hand on when to harvest, but the brix was average of around 14. The clusters are tight and the berries small, but I didn’t do any fruit thinning and it was dry for basically the whole month of August.
Itasca would be my guess. I don’t have any experience with the grape but I do have a couple imposters in my Cayuga that look like those clusters (and I’ve suspected Itasca for them too).
Definitely not Reliance! Reliance is pink/red not green when ripe and the berry size on my Reliance are much smaller than those showing in your picture.
Sorry to hear Stark did not send you what you ordered. They did the same for me when I ordered a Balaton cherry only to find out 3 years later it was not Balaton (the fruit on what they sent was yellow fleshed and Balaton fruit is purple fleshed).
One more reason why I no longer buy from Stark. Yes mistakes happen but it happens too much it seems when one orders retail. I know commercial growers who ordered from Stark and did not have issues to speak of as far as getting the wrong variety. Why do backyard growers seem to get so much mislabeled stock? And not just from Stark but other sources as well. I sure hope retail sales are not the dumping grounds for whatever stock a nursery has left.
I see it where I work when we get in ‘Reliance’ peach trees. Two years in a row what we got in was not Reliance. What we got had large rounded fruit that ripened at the wrong time and was totally different than the Reliance peaches I have grown numerous times over the years.
Sorry but your issue gets me inflamed about the numerous cases of mislabeled fruits that seem to be so common these days from mail order nurseries. Hopefully in your case it was “an accidental mistake” on behalf of the supplier. I know things can get mixed up at harvest time for nurseries or even recorded wrong in cold storage as far as bin # when pulling for orders so it happens.
Yes it’s quite frustrating spending time and money on something and not finding out it’s the wrong thing until several years later. I’ve gotten away from purchasing from stark in recent years mainly due to their lack of information on rootstocks etc. and it seems like their stock isn’t as large or vigorous as other places I’ve ordered from. With that said, I do like their replacement/refund policy and haven’t had issues receiving one with plants that do grow well or die.
I’m not really good at describing tastes, but to me it’s generally sweet and slightly tart around the seeds. The skin is thick and chewy but I just discard that since it’s slipskin. Tastes generally like grapes and maybe melon. However, it’s possible and/or likely they aren’t fully ripe.
Thanks for the suggestion. Looking at starks current offering only really itasca, niagara, and golden muscat are the green(ish) seeded grapes they have. I don’t know if it’s the same as two years ago when I ordered it though. The one thing that doesn’t match with golden muscat from what I read is the golf hardiness. This vine survived -30F the 2018-2019 winter with minimal dieback, so that makes me lean towards itasca or niagara.
Thanks for the information about grape leaves. Looking at the slideshow in this thread, I think I can rule out itasca since the leaves are pretty different.
