How to Grow Grapes, Complete Growing Guide

What's going on growers, it's James Persiglione coming to you live from Jersey. One of my all-time favorite fruits to eat fresh from the garden are grapes. There's nothing like going out grabbing a fresh ripe grape right from the vine. So today I want to show you how to grow your own grapes so you can be eating fresh ones too. Let's go. When it comes to growing grapes there are four main types. American, European, hybrids of the two and also muscadine grapes. Right here is a concord grape. This is an American grape. I planted this in the spring of 2013 and it started to produce fruit only three years after I planted it. American grapes are native to North America. They have slip skins and they're typically good for fresh eating, juicing and you can even make wines with them. They call them slip skins because how easily the meat slips right out of the skin. So the American grape is ideal for my particular situation for a number of reasons that I'll get into now. First of all, American grapes are more cold hardy than European grapes. They're easier to get an overall harvest from and they're less susceptible to disease. I also live in North America and these are native to North America. So the North American grapes just make sense. European grapes are the ones that are going to produce most of your table in wine grapes throughout the world and your raisins too. Like I mentioned though, they're a little more susceptible to disease, a little harder to grow. But there are hybrid grapes which are the combination of the two of them and they are less susceptible to the diseases and actually more cold hardy than just your regular European grapes. If you live in a really hot climate like South Florida, then you may only be able to grow muscadine grapes because grapes need a certain amount of chill hours which are essentially temperatures below about 45 degrees and muscadine grapes need the least amount of chill hours because they're native to southeast of the US. So because of that, they're better adapted to those warm, humid climates and they'll thrive in the summer heat. What I'm getting at here is when you decide to order grapes, you want to make sure when you go on a website or wherever you get them from, you're not just picking the grape that looks the coolest you think. You want to pick types and varieties that are compatible with your particular location. This is what will make growing them and getting good harvests from them so much easier. This is a Niagara grape, another American one. Again, native to my region, so it makes it a lot easier to get fruit from. These are native to New York, Niagara, New York. I'm in New Jersey, so local, so close. And the flavor on these things, out of control good. They're so sweet, you can see the bees and everything are flying around trying to get a little taste. Tuck can't eat the grapes because they're actually really bad for dogs but he always looks out and finds his own cucumbers. This way when we're snacking on grapes, he has something to snack on too. So the next round of cucumbers are doing real well and he's enjoying them probably the most out of anybody. So we'll let him finish up on this cucumber, hang out and just enjoy himself while we finish up some of this grape stuff. Like I just mentioned, it's not only the type but the variety of grape which makes a big difference when growing them. For instance, I live in New Jersey. We have a super humid climate and a big issue with growing grapes is black rot. So this is a fungal issue and the way I deal with this is I grow the Concord grape. So that Concord grape that I showed you earlier is a disease-resistant grape to that black rot once the grapes get to a very small size. So just a couple weeks after bloom, those grapes are disease-resistant to the black rot. On the other hand, a lot of your European grapes are way more susceptible to that black rot and even later into the season. So it makes it much harder to get those. So if you're just starting off, make sure you pick up some grape vines that are disease-resistant and very easy to grow. Ones like the Concord I showed you and also the Canadus grape I have growing too. Here's another variety, ripe too. This is the Thompson seedless. So these ones are not perfectly ripe but they're right on the edge, I believe. And still a great flavor. I believe these are the seedless ones. Great flavor. Those ones are actually seeded. And if you're growing seedless varieties like the Canadus I grew, you might notice that they're not as big as some of the ones you see in the stores and stuff because commercial growers a lot of time will add a growth hormone to those grapes to make sure that they produce more uniformly and large. So if your grapes are a little smaller when they're seedless, don't get too upset about it. It's probably just because of that. Now that we have a good idea of what kind of grapes we're going to be growing and the varieties, we can start picking a location and prepping that spot. So grapes like growing in full sun and you really have to have a trellis or fence for something for them to grow up. And what we want to do is start prepping this ground now for grapes that we're going to be planting essentially next spring. So grapes like soil with a pH of about five to six and they like a lot of organic matter in the soil. If you want to plant grapes, I suggest that you order one-year-old dormant bare root grapes from a reputable company, someone like Rain Tree Nursery. Then you want to take those grapes, put them in in the early spring before the buds start to swell. Before you even plant those grapes though and after you get them out of the package or the box, wherever you get them from, make sure you soak the roots of the grape in water for about an hour or so because they had all that time shipping probably a few days, the roots could have dried out. So we want to make sure we're saturating those roots really efficiently before we start to plant them. I love grapes not just because the flavor is amazing when you eat them fresh and you can do so many different things with them but also because when it comes to perennials, they produce pretty quickly. These grapes I have planted here, I only planted these in April 2018. So this is only the third growing season and they're producing a good amount of fruit. As I move down the fence line too, I'll show you other varieties are doing real well too. Look at the fruit set on that. So one thing I love about growing all different perennials is you can just get good harvest earlier than most people think. So you can plant strawberries and get a harvest after one year, raspberries after one or two years and then grapes after three while you're waiting for things like your fruit trees would take about four years or five years to produce and then you can actually be getting a lot of food while you're just waiting in the interim. That's the same thing I do with my annuals too. After you've chosen your grapes and you have them planted, the next most important thing when it comes to getting good harvest is proper pruning techniques. And a lot of people can get overwhelmed when it comes to pruning grapes, but don't worry. Even if you make a mistake, that's okay. Grapes are very forgiving when it comes to pruning. So the thing is when it comes to grapes, there's basically two main ways of doing it. You have spur pruning and cane pruning. The thing that's reassuring and nice though is you don't really have to worry about what pruning technique you're going to use until the second winter. That's when you're really going to have to prune the grapes to the proper technique and the way you prune them, whether it's cane or spur pruning, is really going to depend on the variety of the grape and the type. That'll guide you. The first year though, when you first plant them, when you first get them in the ground in the early spring, you're going to do something that seems a little counterproductive and a bit crazy. What you want to do is get those in the ground and then once the buds start to swell, you want to cut everything off the grapevine except for two live buds. I'll give you a clip of when I did that, when I first planted this grapevine right here. Again, that might seem counterproductive, but what you want to do when grapes are young is really focus on root production. That's so vitally important. If you focus a lot of the first year or second year even on root production, then you're going to have big healthy vines that produce a lot of fruit for you. When it comes to growing grapes, not only is dormant pruning important, but also spring and summer pruning. You don't want your grapes shading themselves out too much because that's going to just open them up to more issues with fungal disease and stuff. So, I'm not going to go into the real specifics of pruning grapes because that's a video I'm going to make separate in the winter where I'll give you good detail and be able to just go out there and show you just how I prune them. What we're going to do is harvest some of these grapes because they're ready to eat and there's nothing like getting fresh grapes. So, let's get some of these right here. These are the Niagara grapes. Let me cut a nice cluster. You want to make sure you're cutting these clusters off and ideally the best time to do it is in the morning. So, let's cut this cluster. Anyone could be doing this. You'll notice that some of those black things, that's from the black rot. So, there's a little bit of black rot in here, but that's okay. And one of the reasons is because I didn't plant these in the best location. You'll notice I'm growing them in a weird trellis way that not everyone should be growing grapes. The most ideal way to do it would be a south-facing fence. So, if you're going to grow grapes like I did, just because I wanted to be able to have them above my head, just that style of reaching up and grabbing them, make sure you get those disease-resistant ones like the Concord grape. Get some more clusters right here. So, we'll have a lot of grapes here. We can make juices with these because Niagara is great for a white grape juice and we can also make wines and do whatever, give a lot of them away. But again, you wouldn't believe how amazing they taste fresh. The sweetness to them, it's hard to describe and you could even tell by the smell. So, I'll walk into the food forest. Once I get to about the raised bed, I can smell the Concord grapes. Such a strong smell. All the bees are around it because they're so sweet and so good. That's one of the ways to tell when they're ready to harvest too. The sweetness will tell you. The reason I mentioned that sweetness will really tell you when the grapes are ripe is because when it comes to the Concord grape and some of the other grapes, they'll change color before they're perfectly ripe. It's also good to know what season they're going to basically be ripened to. So, I know that anywhere from late August to early September is when these grapes are going to be ripe. So, we'll cut this cluster right here and this one right here and then we'll move up and grab some more clusters. Some of them are bitten a little bit but what I did this year which made a huge difference was I covered them with this insect netting once they started to get close to being ripe. Tuck just like smelling in here. He wouldn't eat them or anything because he knows we like to make sure that he doesn't really have a chance of getting around him but he's a good guy. So, this insect netting right here made a huge difference when it came to protecting my grapes not only from some of the bugs and the bees but also the birds and everything. So, I'll put a link in the description but this is something that I'm always going to be doing in the future. Let me grab some more of these grapes as we move up and again, this is another location that you really shouldn't plant grapes in the middle of a food forest. The reason I have them planted here is because when I first planted this garden, I didn't realize I was going to expand this much but I'm happy that I did plant a disease-resistant variety. That's why I can still get good fruit in the middle of a food forest. We'll get a couple more clusters here and then I'll grab some more of the clusters that are in the middle there. Let's cut this guy off. You'll notice not every grape is perfectly uniform and ripe. Something that probably has to do with the fact that it's in the middle of a food forest but the flavor is still out of bounds good. So, so, so delicious. Let's grab a few more grapes. You'll notice we're gonna have a real nice harvest between these ones, the Niagara grapes, the Thompson grapes and the Concord grapes and we already had some Canada's grapes that we were eating earlier in the season. We'll let those ones stay on and ripen a little bit more and let's go grab some more clusters from some other places like those Thompson seed, like those Thompson seeded grapes. Man, those look good. Let's grab some of these Thompson seeded grapes right here and these ones have like grown in between the fence so it might be a little, a little bit of a tricky thing to harvest them but we'll do our best and I attribute the ability to get a lot of these grapes to a couple things, variety selection and also proper pruning techniques. That's why those are the main thing I focused on. I wanted to spend some time in the beginning on that variety and type selection because really I think that's where everything makes a huge difference. You really have to have the right types and the right varieties when you start. Let's get that nice set in there and we'll grab another nice set here. Looks like we're gonna be making some juices and some jams. In the past I made some jams with the Concord grapes and that was easily the best jelly that I've ever made and I've had people asking me about it, making it again, so maybe we'll have to make it this year. Let me grab this one from the other side, kind of pass my hand over. It's a good feeling getting this stuff right from the backyard. Nothing like it. That's today's video growers. Thanks for watching. I hope you enjoyed it. I hope you got something out of it. I hope all of you take the chance to plant some of your own grapes in your own backyard and if they don't work out perfectly for you, don't get discouraged. That's one reason we like to plant so many different things in a food forest. There's always something that does good one year and when you get that, when you get the good harvest, it's like nothing else. Eating them fresh, sharing them with your friends, it's a great feeling. That's why I love making these videos because I want you to have the opportunity to be able to eat these fresh grapes, share them with your friends and just get all the benefits that come from it. If you guys enjoyed the video, hit the like button, hit the subscribe button, share with your friends. Don't forget to check out the merch down low and remember, whenever you're on Amazon, start your shopping with our Amazon affiliate link. Tuck & James, we'll be back to you again real soon. We out!