How does one go about planting a grape vine? I don’t want to have a whole vinyard or anything, but I think it would be cool to grow a small vine, perhaps indoors (we have LOTS of natural sunlight) or on my balcony. Can this be done simply by planting grapes, or must something more be done? What kind of soil is needed (that I could get at a regular garden center)? If I do end up planting it on the balcony, I would probably get some sort of trellis for it to grow up…I have no idea how big I can hande this.
The main reason I’m asking is that I went to visit some Niagara vineyards yesterday and picked up some bunches of grapes that had fallen off some the the vines (I didn’t pick them - they were on the ground and I was told they wouldn’t be used anyways). I “think” I have a small bunch of Cab Franc, and possibly a Vidal or Reisling bunch. I don’t think I’ll ever make wine out of what I might grow, but it could still be fun to have Reisling grapes around the apartment
Also, you may want to be aware that wine grapes don’t make for good eating: they’re small, seedy, and too sweet compared to table grapes found in the grocery store.
I know that they aren’t all that good for eating, but I did have some at a tasting yesterday (Chardonnay and Pinot Noir actually) that were quite good, especially when served with the wine itself. I guess it would just be a decorative thing, really.
Well, here’s a site talks about growing grapes in containers (unfortunately it’s from the google cache; the original site seems to be gone, so the illustrations are missing).
You’ll note they used “129 liter garbage cans” for the plants, so apparently a large container is called for. Dunno if this fits on your balcony.
Here is someone that was trying to grow vines in smaller containers. The site is a couple of years old and doesn’t say if the experiment succeeded.
Do not expect seeds planted from grapes to be true-to-form. This is what makes grape breeding to build up disease resistance so tricky. Professionally, grape vines are propagated via cuttings.
You, on the other hand, buy grape seedlings from a mail order catalog. If you live in a major grape growing area, the larger (non-Home Depot) garden centers might have a respectable selection. Run of the mill places are unlikely to have the types you want.
Grape vines get really, really, long and need a specific type of regular pruning to be productive. You will probably need to head to the library to read more and see if you are up to the task.
(Not being a wine person, I used to grow Concords and green seedless. The Concords tasted so “grapey” it was amazing. But the seeds…)
Grape vines are weeds in my yard. So the good news is that you probably won’t have any trouble getting them to grow. On the other hand, they do dig in deep (which is what makes them a great drought resistant shade vine), so make sure you give them plenty of root space. I doubt if they’d work as a container plant.
And on the third hand - if all you’re looking for is a small decorative vine, why not plant them in a container and replace them when they become root bound? Go for it!
I am going from memory here, so this may be wildly wrong, but:
If I’m not mistaken, you can’t grow the wine-type grapes from seed, because they’re succeptible to a fungus that attacks their roots and kills them (almost wiped out all European vineyards about 100 years ago). Instead, they have to be grown from cuttings grafted onto rootstock that comes from a different type of grape. So, to grow Riesling, for example, you would first have to plant a non-succeptible variety of grape, then when that gets big enough you can graft a Riesling cutting onto it. Or you could move to Chile - the fungus (whatever its name is) doesn’t occur there.
I haven’t done anything with the grapes yet - they are just sitting on a shelf looking kind of pretty, but turning into raisins I don’t know that I’ll bother planting them anymore - I’ll think about it
