can someone advise me on planting a young grape vine? I was hoping that someone could give me some good advice on grape vines. I am about to make my first attempt ever at growing one. Problem is that my ground is all clay, there is only a thin layer of soil covering it. I was wondering if grape vine roots grow vastly. Do they grow wide, or deep, or just have the one small area of rooting. The reason that I am asking this is that I am considering planting it against my fence in the full sun, but in a large pot of approx 2 and a half feet wide, and approx 1 and a half feet deep. Has anyone else tried this, and if so, did it work? Advice would be great, I love my garden and am learning as I go. I was doing a google search of grapevine roots when I followed a link to this site, and was super impressed, especially at a brilliant man by the name of Jim. I am newly venturing into herbal medicine and have just discovered the most amazing variety of herbs and their uses. I already have a huge garden of the basic herbs, and am now venturing onto the rare and more hard to get. I also love to grow veges and fruit trees. Basically, my love is when you can gain something physical from a plant, either to use in cooking, medicine, etc. Please feel free to make any comments regarding this if you wish. I am just happy to have found a community with a passion for plants such as I have. Take care all, Kathy
great post! i dont know anything about growing them in clay but where i have my trellis the sand is horrible so i raked the yard and put the leaves under the trellis for them to compost. i dont know if it will work for clay but maybe it will work for you. heres a pic of it before and after. take a look
grapes love heat and moist, silty loam. don't bother with much fertilizer; grapes are very vigorous. i just use a bit of fish emulsion a couple times in the spring and it works great. about growing grapes in pots... uh, i'm not sure. i've heard from people who do it and say it works ok. i've also heard that a depth of 4 ft is the minimum a grape vine will thrive in. i guess it all depends on what you want; my 2 grape vines have completely covered the back of my house and are heading around the corner. they produce so much fruit that even our neighbors are sick of grapes. of course, the vines are about 25 yrs old and are in deep, light soil and full sun. if you keep your grapes in giant pots for the first couple yrs it should be fine, but i'd plant them out eventually. if your soil is clay, you might have to dig a hole for the vines and fill it with good, loose soil. i read on this (http://www.my-grape-vine.com/blog/growing-grapes-in-shallow-soil/) site that a 1.5 - 2 meter depth is optimum. good luck!
You have been an amazing help, thank you, I will definately follow your advice. To tell the truth, I was considering digging a huge hole and filling it with really good potting mix, then planting it, to give it a good start. Now I know that I will do that for sure. The weather is currently really wet over here in OZ so its a perfect time to do it, because the ground is soft. I was really surprised by what you said about the grape vine needing so much root space, I had no idea, so my dear, you have been a wealth of information to me, thanks again. I love what I'm doing with my garden, but honestly, I'm just learning as I go along. I hope that you had a lovely Christmas as I did, it was very family orientated for me, and considering that some of my family live interstate now, that was lovely. You take care now. Kathy
Be very careful if you are "digging a huge hole" that you do not end up creating a swimming pool for the plants (this applies to any non-aquatic plant). As a general rule grapes do not like to have wet feet, and even if 90% of the time they are not flooded, the other 10% can kill them. The cure may be as simple as putting a drain into the bottom of the hole, provided that there is somewhere (downhill!) for the water to go. Ralph
thanks ralph, will take note of that, weather has fined up anyway. I think I'm pretty safe, its such a damn hot country here, too hot, for me anyway. I think I will just do the safe thing and dig a reasonable size hole, not too big. Have a good one. Kathy
