Are there any gardener type dopers here who can help me with my grapes? I’ve researched online and can’t seem to find a resource that can help. I’m flipping the coin over if this belongs in CS or IMHO so it’s cool if a mod has a different idea.
Here’s the background. I live just outside of Washington DC. I bought this house in 2000 and in the side yard there is a row of grape vine. At the time it was completely inundated with weeds. You name it, it was growing there; poison ivy, inkberry, wild strawberry, you get the idea. I would be thrilled to harvest grapes from my own yard and of course, I really don’t want a 6 foot tall weed row in my yard so I’ve spent the last few years trying to whip them into shape. I’ve gotten it so most of the weeds are removed and aren’t coming back but nothing I do really seems to be able to produce good fruit. Of course it’s the middle of winter here now, but I’m hoping to get advice now so I can get things rolling for this year’s season.
So this is what I have. The row is 30 feet long and consists of 5-6 main vines equally spaced. Each vine is a 1 to 1-1/2 in diameter at the ground. These grow up to a canopy of vines which are 6-7 feet off the ground. The whole mess is supported by a trellis made of “T”'s (4x4 post with 2x4 tops) with heavy wire strung between them. The ground under the whole area is covered with weed cloth and maybe 3-4 inches of shredded hardwood mulch to keep the weeds down. The whole row is freestanding and gets full sun all year around. Two or three of the plants are concord grape and the rest are some kind of red table grape
The last few years I’ve gotten pretty much the same results. In early spring I start to get buds appearing all over and foliage grows like mad until June. In late May/June I’ve had to spray the leaves with insecticide to control Japanese Beetles. There were a few years where I didn’t do that and they destroyed the foliage. Anyway next the grapes come in and there will be mini grapes everywhere. However before the grapes get any kind of edible looking, they shrivel. So a particular bunch of grape will be half unripe green grape and half raisin. There seems to be no time where there is a peak ripeness. To be honest, I wouldn’t even be writing this if they were all almost ripe and I could pull them and ripen them in the kitchen. To say that I’ve never harvested grape from these would be a lie. One year or another I may have gotten about a gallon of sickly concord grapes which were enough to make a little jelly. I would think that the quantity of plants I have would produce silly amounts of grape.
So Dopers, I turn to you. What am I doing wrong? Point me towards a decent resource? Any and all suggestions would be appreciated.
(My first OP, Yea me!!)
