Delight has only been in the ground for one season.
We also grow ruby, autumn royal, black monukka, blueberry, flame, himrod, thomcord, and concord. All of those are well established and producing. Well except the concord…its not real well suited for Phoenix. Im giving it one more year to shape up before I yank it.
Edit: I forgot to mention that we also grow a muscadine grape too. Turns out these grapes that come from the deep south do quite well here in the Arizona desert too. Its more of a novelty than anything tho.
Actually its one of our favorite varieties. Excellent flavor, nice sized berries. My only complaint is that like its thomspon seedless parent its a cane prune. I really prefer the ease of spur…but thats of course a pretty minor complaint.
Best grape I ever ate was Scarlet Royal. But is proprietary? Cannot find plants of it for sale anywhere.
Bunches were for sale briefly last year at my local Wegmans. It comprises huge red grapes with a neutral Thompson-like flavor, but even sweeter and juicier. Blew my mind.
I’ve been thinking about building a small grape arbor and thing I will tackle that project this spring. I know absolutely zero about growing grapes and varieties. I just know what I like in the supermarkets. I prefer grapes that have a crisp texture with thin skin and without seeds. The best grocery grapes I’ve had tend to be red or Scarlet in color and round rather than oblong.
I’d like some advice on selecting 2 varieties that will grow well in the mid atlantic zone 6a. I’ve tasted some pretty good green thompson seedless grapes but it sounds like they aren’t that great for the home grower. I do not care for grapes like concord where the skin sloughs off and leaves the sour pulp.
I recently planted Lakemont. It is one of the many Thompson offspring bred to perform well in the East; but it is the one reported to have the most of that delicious sweet neutral Thompson-like flavor (rather than the “foxy” flavor of Concord-like grapes). Don’t get me wrong: I love Concord grapes too. But sometimes I just want to chow down on a heap of sweet seedless Thompson-like juice bombs.
Ironically, I purchased Lakemont from Stark Bros, which I have been bashing. I’ll readily admit that Starks has good deals on grape vines and berry plants. The plant they sent looks good. I just hope it’s true to name!
I have been eye-balling Swenson Red. I think @scottfsmith has had success with it (but it has small seeds).
I’m also watching Gratitude (and the other Univ of Arkansas introductions) as I consider planting more sweet juicy table grapes that have a chance of performing well here.
Nicely done on the arbor! An arbor with a seating area/picnic table underneath is a long-time dream of mine, thanks for the inspiration.
My fav table grape from my zone 5 location has been Somerset Seedless, when I can beat the wasps and my six year old to 'em! I think the low vigor of its growth habit would make it easy to manage on an arbor.
I am moving my grape plantings to mainly the new U Ark ones (Joy, Hope, Gratitude) - unlike all the tasty seeded grapes I grow my family will actually eat them. These new ones are vastly superior to the older seedless grapes that do well in the east - they have good flavor, thin skin, and are relatively crunchy compared to the older varieties.
If I build a similar arbor to JimP how many grape plants would you recommend purchasing? I saw a special pack for $39.99 from stark that contains one plant of each of the 4 Ark Varieties. Would this be enough? Obviously it would take a few years for them to get going but I don’t imagine having anything more than the Arbor. Out of the 4 Ark varieties Gratitude sounds the most appealing.
