Wine Country? Starting a midwest, urban vineyard (part 1)

Sometimes the urban farm is just one big experiment. Eventually I can see things settling down into a routine, but I don't really want that. I love trying out new things that may (or may not) work out.

My lovely next door neighbor brought me some grape cuttings from her work mate who had pruned his plants. She thought I might be the right person to take them and turn them into something useful. Of course I jumped at the chance to add grape vines to my collection of perennial fruit crops.

The grapes are a grab bag and all my friend knows about the vines is that they were cut from a mix of red, white and purple grapes originally purchased  from a local garden store, Jung's. The grapes in this Jung's pack are the winter hardy varieties Edelweiss (green grape), Fredonia (vigorous, Concord type), and Swenson Red (table grape). These plants cost about $8 each, so if these cuttings work out, this an easy way to get free grape vines. And as a big thank you, I am planning to share my plants with my neighbor so that she, too, can have a vineyard in her yard. Now we need to find some good wine and jelly recipes!

Rather than following one technique I found, I combined a few rooting ideas that I could do easily in my kitchen.

I chose cuttings that had at least 2 or 3 good buds.

The cuttings were trimmed to 12-14 inches.

Using a sharp knife I trimmed the bark back at the bottom end, about 1/2 inch.

The ends were then dipped into a generic rooting hormone-- my local mega hardware store had only one brand to select, Take Root.

Cuttings were placed into tap water. The water was changed every couple of days.

27 cuttings, and hoping for roots. If all of them work, we'll have $216 worth of grape vines.


Time Passes...3 weeks later...

At 3 weeks more than half of the cuttings have large, healthy roots. The others looks like roots could still be forming.

I mixed up a soil approximately half sand and half peat moss.

I found these biodegradable pots (next to the peat pots) made from cow manure, a renewable resource--living here in Wisconsin where we have an overabundance of cow manure, I'm glad they have another new use for it!

The plants growing separately in pots will give the roots more room to grow.

16 cuttings were potted. After a few weeks in the pot I will transplant them outdoors (if the other 11 cuttings grow roots, I will pot them up as well).

In part 2 of this post I hope to talk about my planting and trellising plan. If anyone has any grape trellis experience or ideas, please leave them in the comments section!