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Why Having A Grape Trellis Is Vital
You may believe that having to grow your grapes along a grape trellis is difficult, but you will discover that the grape trellis will make it very easy to grow and harvest grapes. The grape trellis will make spacing a non-issue in your vineyard. Even in a small backyard, the grape trellis allows you to grow, prune, and pick good grapes.
Aside from providing you extra working space, the grape trellis is of course important to support your grapevines when they are young and also when they have large grape clusters. There is no particular way that your trellis needs to appear. The vineyards you see typically have the purely functional grape trellis, but you can have a very beautiful one in your yard. You can make it out of a variety of materials, such as wood, iron, stainless steel, aluminum, and PVC pipe. You can buy a prefabricated grape trellis or design your own. One of the first things to remember is that you should provide an 8'X8' growing space for every single grapevine and build the trellis before planting.
The grape trellis you select should match the local climate. In a warmer climate, you'll want a bigger one. But in cooler climates, a shorter one will deal with the weather much better. It can be as short as 3', while the warmer climate grape trellis can be as tall as 8'.
Ensure that you carefully plan your vineyard location prior to digging your holes. Making a map of your site before digging is a great idea. Once you know exactly where to dig, you need to go down approximately two feet. So if you're placing in 8' posts, they will rise about 6' above ground level. It isn't a terrible idea to use concrete to hold at least your end posts in position. After all, it will be a couple of years before your grapevines will have grapes on them. You can add extra strength to the posts by making use of anchor wires from the ground or shorter posts. Remember to keep 8' in between each of your posts. You will need to run galvanized steel wire in two rows, with one row being a few inches above the ground and one wire being at the top of the posts. For simplicity, you can staple the wires to the posts using a staple gun.
Your objective will be to support the vines grow along the trellis wires. You will need to do some pruning and stringing of your vines so they can get going in the right directions along the wires. Do not use anything that could damage your shoot, like wires, to tie your shoot where you wish. Some fabric or wide plastic strips ought to be enough.
Even for a small crop of grapes, it is an excellent idea to purchase a trellis. There will be a little bit of investment, but you will have much better results. But, make sure if you spend a lot of money to purchase one, that you don't screw up your grapes by failing to spend some time to properly plan your grape trellis.
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