So, I ordered 6 red seedless grapes that are supposedly 2 years old and they’re bareroot.
It’s still about 28-32 here at night but will warm very soon. We’re basically at the end of possible below freezing temps.
The ground is wet. Should I go ahead and plant the new grape plants in their designated spots, keep them in pots until warmer and the ground is dryer, or just plant them all together in a bundle in the ground until later and then transplant them?
TIA
If they are dormant, then plant them now and don’t worry about it. If they have green growth starting, protect them & don’t plant till danger of frost is past.
Go ahead and plant them in their permanent spots, unless, as SethDoty mentioned, they are breaking dormancy. Prune back the tops hard, and most importantly, shorten the roots so that none of them are bent when buried. It’s good to give each plant a gentle tug upwards after as well to straighten out any bent roots. More than most woody plants, grapes do not tolerate/recover well from having bent or twisted roots at planting. We trim the roots of our bareroot vines by up to 75% for our vineyards where I work.
They arrived today so here’s a pic. These are the first grapes I’ve ever bought so how do they look in your opinion? It looks like the roots were trimmed.
I’m soaking them in a bucket of water. One of the plants on the left has roots from 2 nodes.
How deep should they be planted?
Grapes can be planted deep (to my understanding) as they root readily. But I’d say plant relatively normally just having the roots below the surface. If you go deeper it won’t hurt anything though. Seems to be a harsh root prune job to me, but they will be fine.
Can i leave them in a bucket of water until planting tomorrow?
Recommendation from the place I bought mine from was to soak them for a few hours before planting. I’ll be joining you in a month or so planting them for the first time!
Shouldn’t be a problem, I wouldn’t soak them for much longer than 24hrs so depends how long they have been in water already. Still doubt it would be an issue to go 2 days
I put them in water about 1200 today and will take them out tomorrow about 1000 so it’ll be less than 24 hours
Roots look fine, but you can trim them even shorter. You don’t want any of them to be bent after planting.
Planting depth doesn’t matter that much as long as the graft union stays above ground. Just be sure to allow for settling. In commercial vineyards we plant them deep so the roots stay below the level of any undervine cultivation we do.
Bait for slugs and snails if you have a lot of them in your area. They will eat the new shoots.
