Question here for those grape growers.
When your bare root vines arrive, is there any need to protect them from sunburn even if they are still dormant?
My 7 Errante Noir were delivered today and I’ll be planting them in the next day or so.
If anyone has an informed answer, I’d appreciate it.
Thanks
Do you mean before planting or after?
Typically, we’ll mound soil over newly planted bareroot vines and completely bury them. Once the vines have started growing and the new shoots are just beginning to poke out of the mound, the soil is pulled away from the vine and a carton or grow tube is placed around the plant to protect it from herbivores.
The mounding is supposedly for protection against desiccation while the roots start growing, but I’ve never conducted a side-by-side test to see how well it improves survival. It’s just something that everyone does. If you have heavy clay soil the shoots may not be able to grow through the mound, and if you don’t pull all the soil away from the graft union, you can get roots developing from the scion and phylloxera issues later on.
With just a few vines you probably don’t need to worry about them drying out from lack of water. It’s important to trim any roots that are likely to get bent during planting. Many people will trim off all but three inches or so of root and let the root system regrow from there. You don’t need to be so drastic if you are careful. Grapes roots really suffer from being bent or girdled, and vigor problems can often be due to improper planting.
Thanks for the reply @GrapeNut
I’ll see how they look when I open them up. It might be that I can use the grow tubes as the shelter against dessication and put soil inside the tubes temporarily.
It’s just 7 vines. I won’t let them want for water.
Exciting!
Here they are. Interesting how almost all the wood shown is the rootstock 1103P. The varietal is only the last few inches of the wood.
Good thing I mounded the soil where they will be planted. The existing roots will be rather deep.
Planted. Followed the instructions.
Now for wait to see how they wake up.
That’s normal. In a commercial vineyard, you want the origin of the root system to be 6 inches or so below ground so that you can cultivate around the trunk for weed control and not damage any roots. You also want the graft union several inches above the surface of the ground to avoid scion rooting.
Well they are in the ground. Let’s see how long they take to wake.
They came from upstate NY so I’m sure they will feel the warmth here and do so in a few weeks to a month.
All seven Errante Noir grape vines have budded out. So much so I’ll need to select the two most vigorous buds on each vine soon, then pick one later on this summer.
Typically we let all the shoots grow the first year to encourage as much root system development as possible and wait until the following spring to start training the trunk. However, with some extra care and fertilizer there’s no real reason for you not to start this year. I would, however, be ruthless next spring and cut any vines that are scrawny down to two buds. If the cane you are training for a trunk hasn’t reached around pencil thickness at the end of the growing season, I would cut it back and start over.
Understood…and in accordance with everything I’ve read.
I am doing the VSP system, so my cordon will be around 30 inches. I should be able to get some cordon growth accomplished this first year, especially considering the long growing season. Next year I will cut back each cordon cane to the proper thickness to continue the cordon.
I think I’ll wait until I have at least two obvious leader shoots for each vine and remove the rest, then depending on how those two do, pinch back the best one for my cordon. I’ll let the second shoot grow to feed the roots then remove it next year.
Sounds like a good plan. To promote vertical growth, you can remove any lateral shoots that form while they’re small, except for those in the top 3-4 nodes below the cordon wire. You will want to keep those for potential cordons.
On very vigorously growing vines, the internode spacing might be long enough that pinching the tip of the cane leaves you with nodes that are awkwardly located relative to the height of the cordon wire. They, and the resulting cordons may be too high or too low. If that’s the case, you can try bend the shoot over to one side (at an angle, not completely horizontal, as that will reduce its growth) and treat it as a future cordon. This might allow you to adjust the height of the node for the opposite cordon.
Indeed.
We’ll see as things progress.
My biggest short term concern is getting roots developed sooner than later. We may get a few inches of rain this week. I’m concerned about root asphyxia early on before more roots develop shallower than what was planted just 10 days ago.
Fully dormant vines can withstand being flooded for a week or two. I’m not sure when that tolerance breaks down though.
So I’ve had 2.61 inches of rain in the last hour.
We’ll see how the newly leafing out grape vines do. The growth is about an inch long on most new growth.
4.04 inches of rain now in the last 2 hours…and still raining…
Your rain is becoming my rain - just outside of Memphis.
Wishing you the best of luck. I can tell that you are excited. What are you planning to do with the Errante Noir grapes after they are producing?
Over 7 inches of rain now. Close to finished… I think.
Yes wine of course. Pointless to grow unless that’s my aim, though I do simply like the look of a row of grape vines anyway. Kind of hits both ying and yang for me. The order of the trellis and training. The natural mess of a growing vine in late summer.
Check. Check.
I’m curious. How does one control the percentage of alcohol in making the wine?
I’ve been buying hard cider but the only way that I can drink it is by mixing it with regular apple juice. The stuff is cloudy so it may have been better labeled as apple cider. Did you know that hard cider is considered to be a wine by the government?
The next time I’m at Caesar’s I’ll look for Errante Noir wine.
Are you saying the Errante Noir grapes can’t be used as tables grapes or just as a juice?
The first few years you are supposed to protect the trunk from sunburn, their bark sheds easily, and so I did not bother using paint, white plastic is often used for this
I used something a lot like the following, I forget which exact one I used Amazon.com
Firstly, you are not likely to find any Errante Noir wine. It’s a long road to travel for a new wine grape to make it to market. People are stubborn and won’t buy unfamiliar things easily.
This variety and 4 others were developed my Dr. Walker and his team at UC Davis over a 20 year period of breeding. The goal was to produce mostly vinifera grapes for the wine industry that are resistant to Pierce’s Disease. PD is a 100+ million dollar a year industry loss across the world.
Next as far as alcohol content, it’s simply the amount of sugar available to be consumed by the yeast. One biproduct of that is alcohol. If the grape, or whatever fruit you are using to make the wine, doesn’t have a lot of sugars, the resultant alcohol content will be lower. Sugar is added to these juices to increase the alcohol content to the level desired.
Plenty of websites and YouTube videos on wine making.
