Growing Grapes

Growing grapes is easy when award winning author of "The Grape Grower", Lon Rombough is the expert providing free tips and advice. Go here for your free master class on growing grapes..(coming soon)

Whether growing grapes for wine, decoration, or commercial reasons, the principles remain the same.

...AVOID THE 3 DEADLIEST GRAPE GROWING SINS !

Lon Rombough, one of the world's leading authorities on grape growing, author of "The Grape Grower", and featured in "Chicken Soup for the Gardeners' Soul" outlines the 3 deadliest of all grape growing sins.

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Deadly Sin #1

Spraying..don't be too eager to keep pests under control.  So many people look at a vine and they see one insect chewing on one leaf, or one spot of disease on one leaf, and they get all excited and they break out the spray gun and they start just spraying the heck out of everything.  They find out later, perhaps, that whatever they saw was just a minor little insignificant thing that would never have spread anyway. In the meantime, they've not only killed the pest, but they killed off everything in the area that might have helped control the pests.  So don't get too excited about pests and diseases on your vines.  If you've followed the other principles and chosen your variety well to start with, you'll have a vine that should be able to resist the diseases and pests. For more information on choosing varieties go to…

I've known many people who often buy things like Flame Seedless and plant them down in the southeast U.S.  In that climate where it's hot and humid in the summer, Flame Seedless hasn't got a chance.  You can spray it, and spray it, and spray it.  You can spray three and four times a week and it will still succumb to diseases within three to four months at the most.  Very few people could ever get them past a year old growing outdoors in that climate.  They have to be grafted to root stocks that are resistant to root pests.  They would have to be sprayed just about daily and you'd almost have to grow them in a net cage to keep off insects that could spread diseases like Pierce's Disease, which is an internal condition.  You can't spray for it.  Once the insects have spread it to the vine, it's done for. 

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Deadly Sin #2

I would say the biggest mistake that most people make is that they fall for advertising.  They see one of the big-box stores that has grapevines packaged, vines out for sale and they think, "Oh, let's have some vines," and they go and grab a few of these.  They plant them and then they're disappointed when they don't do well.  They're not buying according to what necessarily does well in their area.  They're buying according to what that store was able to get a big quantity of, and especially, they chose by a characteristic or a name that would sell, not because it was a trait that would make the vines the best for that particular area. 

Some parts of the country they can get away with that.  For instance, on the west coast of the United States, there's enough - the climate is dry enough that disease is not a problem.  Many of the eastern varieties can be grown here without any kind of disease problems, so if you plant them, odds are you'll get a reasonably crop not matter what.  In much of the country, doing it that way is a formula for disaster because after a few weeks or a few months, the vines have gotten so spotty with disease, or have run into other problems, or just simply don't have the heartiness to go through winter.  Usually by the following spring, the person who bought the vines is ready to look for a new set of vines from other store and they're disgusted with the time they've wasted.  Don't just buy something without know if it will work in your area, or even finding out if it will produce for you. Get started properly with expert help by claiming your free master class on growing grapes.

How to choose the right varieties free download here 

Deadly Sin #3

The third biggest mistake is a beginner will make when growing grapes out by planting the vine without knowing how to train it to begin with.  They'll think that they've seen vines growing here and there, and it shouldn't be all that hard to train them up the way they've seen elsewhere.  Then they start growing them and they don't know what to do with it.  Pretty soon, they've got a vine that's growing cockeyed and bent in every which way, and they don't know why it isn't working. 

In most cases, it's simply a matter of the fact that most people don't realize that in order to train a vine, you don't start it out like a shrub from a nursery and leave it in the form that you buy it.  You have to prune it back just about to ground zero with only a couple of buds left on the vine and start out whole new shoots that are trained up straight as you want them as new trunks.  Because they didn't study the proper training and pruning methods beforehand, they didn't realize that was what was necessary in order to train the vine and get up into a form that would not only bear well, but would be manageable and could be grown with ease.  Do your homework.  Learn how to prune or train beforehand. Find out more about Pruning grape vines here.

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