And I mean pretty much cutting it back to a stump each year…
I’m in zone 4 with guaranteed gale-force winds in the middle of the winter. I have been dabbling with grapes and I must say; branches do not like to stick around. And yet one of them foot long stump (5/8" caliper?) leafed and is bringing up two nice clusters.
I figure (as in I don’t know, just learning grapes) that is a possibility to just keep pruning just about everything back and let the roots push new growth (and a small crop) each year? Would that be enough to keep the roots healthy and growing? I imagine that keeping more top growth that it would have more energy for better cropping but I wouldn’t mind just keeping it small and producing a modest crop.
This is the guy on a pot, going in the ground next year. The ones already on the ground are still too small and haven’t attempted to fruit yet. The porch rail is 36" or so. An overachiever considering how little foliage it seems to have. Frontenac.
I wonder if you could not plant them in ground but trellis them very low (like step over figs)…
Your trunk turns pretty much immediately into a cordon that runs along just above the ground on a trellis wire. Your branches could shoot off that and fruit and you could prune the branches back to 2 buds each early spring.
Over winter, let that trellis drop to the ground and cover with tarps, hay, snow ?
Never tried that, but If I was in Zone 4 I might to get more grapes.
That is sort of how I do my fig here in z7… once it goes dormant I cut it back to about 2 ft tall and I can protect that over winter with hay bales and tarps.
I have this going on…a red seedless (Flame?) I got from Lowes at each end, then I run them across the bottom (around 10 nodes = half way across) and then train them up a grid as best as I can before they fall over and go every which way. Anyway, with a setup like this a person could prune it back to the bottom, which is still a significant amount of wood, and cover it for the winter.
I should note I have no idea what I am doing and these are only three years old now…
my 3rd year Marquette grape again died to the ground last winter then regrew and has 5 grape clusters.! i trained 2 cordons 12in from the ground and 2 more at 4ft. that way if the upper ones get zapped hopefully the lower ones with snow cover make it. none of them survived last winter due to Marquette being a z4 plant and we got z3 cold. hopefully winters normal this year and all cordons make it. funny though that my z3 hardy king of the north died but Marquette came back. both planted next to each other. weird.
Where I am Marquette starts too late and crops too late, we need the perfect early spring and late winter for them to work. It only happens every few years. I have one, in the early spring i plan on spraying it with magnesium citrate to promote early leafing. We’ll see if that works.
Based on talking with others (and people growing grapes here is not common) valiant is the most reliable. King of the North is the second most common. Marquette and Frontenac are hardy but start too late and don’t seem to ripe fruit on time.
The Potted one is a Frontenac. I’ll overwinter it on the pot so I can bring it indoors in April
General Viticulture has a list, but it’s mostly for pure vinifera wine types.
Minnesota Grape Growers’ association may have some good lists for the midwest.
I found this picture of the potted grape on top of the well. It is the small grape vine on the left. Its only early July so the grapes would be tiny right now. Hope this helps.
On the island of Crete, grapes are grown close to the ground, with vines wrapped into a kind of wreath, to protect against howling winds.
Ancient traditional method, seems to work.
When cutting a vine really low, keep in mind that grapes do not produce adventitious buds. If a vine dies to the ground and re-sprouts, there were buried buds in the base of the trunk. Without those, no new growth will appear, as the roots cannot make new shoots. If you root your own cuttings, make sure you leave plenty of buds below ground level.
The flowers are typically produced on buds produced the previous year, but sometimes old buried buds can have flower primordia and still fruit. Not all varieties will do this. Agree that the best bet is to protect low cordons.
my Marquette grape died to the ground last winter but has since grown back and is developing 6 clusters of grapes. are you saying this is unusual for grapes to do this?
Unusual for some varieties of grapes to do that. Some are not productive unless pruned a certain way, spur vs cordon etc. All will regrow as long as buried buds are present, but many will not fruit from those buried buds. It also depends on how mature the vine was when those buried buds were formed. If the flower primordia are not already present in the old buds, it won’t fruit now. It’s good that Marquette can do that in your climate.
I have a friend with a large vineyard in middle TN. He has some Marquette and will pull it all out next year. It buds out so early here that it rarely avoids late frosts, and unlike many hybrids, it does not fruit off secondary shoots. He gets hit by late frost 2 out of 3 years, and his varieties that produce well on secondaries can still produce a 30-40% crop, some even more. The bad side of secondary fruit is when you don’t get the late frosts, you end up with a mix of ripe fruit on primaries, and unripe fruit on secondaries, so harvesting gets complicated.
