If your climbing ornamental or even your grapevine appear woody and brown in early spring, don’t be alarmed; it is just being itself, even if it look like someone killed the plant over the winter. Before long a little green tip pushes upward from within wood. That’s the beginning of what is actualy a biological dance between you (or me), the vine, the weather, and the soil.
Learn the timing, and help along the dance, but never force things. Time yourself to follow nature’s clues instead. The visual guide show five stages from germination to fruiting. These include seedling establishment, vegetative growth, flowering, and finally fruiting.
How to Grow Vines Successfully
Why does all of this matter? Each phase require a specific nutrient regimen, and one common error, for instance, is overfeeding nitrogen while in bloom. You get lots of leaves but not so much fruit. According to the chart, zinc and boron facilitates proper pollination at this point. Tiny details like these can be big when it comes to yield.
Each year follow an annual cycle: winter means rest but far from idleness, it’s pruning time. Pruning in active growth isn’t just wasteful; it’s stressful on the plant. Shape up its form once the sap has receded, typically late winter, with minimal sap bleed.
Then come spring and the threat of frost damage, with buds about to break open, pay close attention to your local weather report… It’s another small window that could save your entire season’s crop. Bud break turns to shoot growth quickly, and training the shoots early to grow upward toward wires at once ensures improved air circulation later on.
Pruning systems can be confusing to novices (and I’m not sure why we even bother to choose one; it’s logical enough if you understand what kind of plant you have). For instance, grapes has fruitful basal buds that make them suited for spur pruning, which is a way to shape them so they produce fruit every year. Many good wine-producing regions favor cane pruning because it allows them greater control over yield.
With really vigorous plants such as wisteria or kiwis, maybe just simple fence support or head training makes sense. Either way, the aim is always to achieve some kind of balance between fruit production and vegetative growth. Too many leaves on a vine mean poor fruit, but too few berry will exhaust it.
But there’s also another critical factor that plays a quiet but vital part: the nutrition of the soil. Vines are adaptable, but detest wet soils. Root rot is a silent killer. That’s why good drainage is essential. Test your soil’s pH in early spring, adjusting if needed with either sulfur or lime before any active use by the roots. Incorrect pH means micronutrients such as zinc and iron will be locked up. No matter how much fertilizer you throw at this problem, it won’t matter. It’s all about availability (not just presence).
Stop applying nitrogen as fruit develops and moves toward veraison, which encourages a greater concentration of sugar (and better color). Time to tell the vine to get busy making fruit rather than leaves.
• Be on the watch for pests; don’t react. Humidity + low air flow = happy powdery mildew. The first line of defense is to manage the canopy. When the clusters reaches veraison, prune out a few leaves surrounding the cluster to increase light penetration, also reducing mildew pressure. Why take away green? Doesn’t seem right. But in the end, the payback in healthier berries and higher quality are worth it.
• Phylloxera’s a history issue still. Again, you can controls phylloxera mostly through grafting with resistant rootstock. That’s why many commercial vines is grafted.
When do I pick? That depends on what you want to happen. Wine grapes are not the same than table grapes when it comes to sugar content. A refractometer is used to measure brix levels so there’s no guessing game going on. Tasting will also tell you if fruit is perfectly ripe or not yet ripe. As the sugars increase, the acidity decreases. It’s what makes for that balance you want in the finished product.
Growing vines is A GAME of one-part observation, one-part patience. They reward close attention and gentle intervention. From that initial shoot that breaks ground to the final leaf that falls in fall, every act have a consequence. Know the process, and you can work with your vine, not against it. That’s what all that brown cane was doing in spring, waiting for its cue. You should of known it was coming.