I have two grapevines. I am VSP trellising one of them and have figured out the details thanks to members here who baby-stepped me through it. For my other one, I want to build a pergola. I’m having trouble understanding how the vine would actually work over a pergola.
First of all, it seems to me that there are one of two ways to do this. First is growing the vine up along one of the legs of the pergola. This would be the more attractive / clean design. Like this:
However, as you can see, the question that comes up is where do the opposite facing shoots go? I don’t think anyone would want them flopping over, like this:
So am I misunderstanding something?
The other design is having the vine positioned in the middle of the pergola, like this:
This design seems to be a solution to the previous problem, but I think it’s less attractive having the trunk right in the middle.
Please share any ideas. I have no idea if any of these are going to work out like I have it played out in my mind. So if there’s anything to point out, please share. Thanks.
I’m making one like your last picture for my kiwi vine except mine will connect with the edge on the long side for the female and the male will have the other edge. i will allow each to spread towards the middle.
Well, I have had a 24’ x 12’ arbor for the last 10 years and understand the issues that you are dealing with -
Are you spur pruning or cane pruning off of the cordon?
You would be pruning in order to choose and train the shoots to follow the cross pieces. Any chosen shoots that tend to grow opposite would need to be bent to grow the direction desired.
Actually I think that it would be best (based on my experience) to have the trunk up one of the legs and have the cordon diagonally thru the middle of the pergola to the opposite corner.
In any design that you choose your always are going to have shoots that run off of your pergola. Get used to that. I just let them hang and not worry about it.
