Summer Care for Your Grape Plants
Taking care of grape plants involves a lot of hard work and dedication, but no one ever said that the good things in life come easy. There is a sense of pride that’s associated with looking at your grape plants and knowing that they’re healthy and productive. This is something that grape farmers know all too well and theirs is a labor of love in the hope that their grape plants will reward them with the sweetest fruit.
There are specific tasks to do in each season and knowing what these are will go a long way in growing strong grape plants. In spring, grape farmers will typically do things such as tying the grape vines to wires to control growth, replacing worn posts and mowing between the rows. The latter is done to ensure space to move about freely as preparation for the blossoming grape vines and fruit. The amount of rest time between the spring and summer seasons depend on the area in which the grape plants are grown. Most times you’ll have a few weeks before you need to start concentrating on those summer chores.
There are two main tasks that you’ll be faced with in summer, one of which is to start new growth. Some grape farmers choose to do this in spring, and you can as well, but you’ll often have more than enough tasks on your hands and you can put it off until summer. The older a grape plant is, the less it will produce. Very old vines may stop producing altogether and end up very brittle, with few younger vines spreading from the base. In order to keep your vineyard, or backyard garden, productive you’ll need to replace these as soon as you see them starting to wear themselves out. Knowing how to do this properly is important when learing how to grow grapes.
It’s not that hard and you don’t have to go out to nursery to buy new grape plants. At the start of summer, you should see smaller vines growing in between the more established ones. What you’ll need to do is tie one end of a string around the top of the small vine and the other end to the top wire of the grape row. You don’t want to do this too tightly since you can damage the delicate vine. Eventually, the baby vine will grow into a thriving adult.
If, by chance, you’re not seeing any smaller vines shooting up then you’re in real trouble. Just kidding. You do have the option of burying one of the older vines that has started producing less fruit. Of course it must still be connected to the original base vine. You can stretch this out, ensuring that it is in contact with the ground, and cover it in the dirt. Leave a length open at the end. You’re going to attach this part of the grape plant to the top wire via a string. What will eventually happen is that this vine with grow more sturdy with time and eventually become a stable base vine itself.
The other summertime task you’ll be charged with is removing any other plants which may compete with your grape plants for valuable nutrients. This includes any weeds, brush and extra grape seedlings. Of course, if you happen to run your own nursery as well, you’ll have a great idea for what to do with the seedlings. Competition for resources can end up affecting both the quantity and quality of your grape harvest so it’s very important that you deal with it promptly.
If you have a lot of time on your hands, and a small number of grape plants, you might be able to get away with removing any competition by hand, either by clipping them or pulling them out by hand. You do have the option to use herbicides, and pesticides, but you’ll need to make sure that you protect any young grape plants as the chemicals can kill them. Some grape farmers can’t fathom the thought of exposing their fruit to anything even vaguely toxic. The choice is up to you.