Hello, I just purchased and planted a bare-root Pinot Noir vine for my wife. It will be for purely ornamental purposes. Right now, I have it in a plastic barrel on our patio. http://ashevillecomputersupport.com/pinot_vine.jpg Can anyone tell me how quickly it will grow (and how quickly it will outgrow the barrel)? I'm trying to pick a good permanent spot for it. Any general advice on growing the vine would be welcome too. Thank you, Eric
Many of the vines in the government repository (CFIA at Sydney, BC) are grown permanently in containers that I would estimate at about 10 - 12 gallon size. Once your roots calm down from the transplant the growth should take off. I would suggest very light feeding either with a soluble or sustained release (like Osmocote), and you may wish to check in this forum for a recent exchange about micorrhyzae and fertilizing. Most of the advice you will find about growing grapes is directed towards production of properly ripened fruit, so it might be appropriate to treat your planting a bit differently. Where maximum direct sun is good for the berries, it may bring on too much vigor for you and a never ending need to prune. By "ornamantal" did you mean "just for looking at"? by all means, trim off the fruit this year, but leave a few bunches next year; they may well ripen for you. There is a large grape and wine industry in your state, and lots of info at www.ncwine.org Ralph
Thank you for your reply. Yes, by ornamental, I mean just looking at it as we eat and drink wine. This seems to make my use of the vine very atypical. I am currently thinking about two different scenarios (depending on the growth/needs of the vine). Here is the setting (this is the East side of the house which gets lots of morning sun). The boxwoods will be coming out, to be replaced by Mtn Laurel or Rhododendron: http://ashevillecomputersupport.com/house.jpg Right now, the vine is in the plastic barrel on the NE corner of the patio. If that is enough soil, we might want to put the vine in a nicer wooden barrel and leave it there and let it grow in both directions along the walls at the top of the patio. The alternative would be to put it in the ground where the house and patio meet. Hopefully, we would be able to train it up onto the top of the patio walls and maybe even in the other direction up and over the bay window of the house. If the vine wants to grow like Wysteria, we have room for it, I think. Do either or both of these sound realistic to you? Thanks again, Eric
Pinot Noir has a reputation of being a cranky vine to grow, and that's not a wrong statement, just incomplete. There are literally hundreds of PN "clones" with widely differing growth characteristics. I put "clones" in quotes because there may be a tendancy to picture clones as rows of identical plants, but many are different enough to be known by a different name and now traded as a separate variety. One of the differences in those still known as PN is hardiness, and if you have for instance the Mariafeld clone, it has increased resistance to bunch rot, but decreased hardiness. Container growing will further push that envelope. Ashville is US zone 6, we are approx. 8 so while we can get away with it (heaped to the edge of the container with wood chips) you may not have that choice. Once established in the ground grapes are notoriously tenacious and that would be my suggestion. Your Boxes look healthy, though they are more shallowly rooted than grapes, so there must be some soil and water, and drainage will be fine with the slope. The vine won't cling to go over the bay window, so you would have to provide some support there (a trellis or wire frame) and some support to get it to the edge of the deck. Ralph
