Are you good at growing grapes? Advice needed

[Cathpot]

I put in two vines last year- one outside against a sunny wall and one fed into the greenhouse but with roots outside. They both put on growth last year and I left them alone. This year they are growing away but I am finding the pruning advice a bit intimidating. The outside one is a fan sort of shape and I’ve cut it back to one leading stem and 4 side stems. It has 2 currently very very very tiny bunches of about 6 pea sized grapes.

The greenhouse one has two parallel stems setting off along wires running just under the roof glass - no sign of any fruit at all.

My vague plan was to leave them alone again this year while they settle in but then RHS has pictures of lots of pruning I should be doing which- ridiculously - I am finding hard to follow.

if you are good at grapes can I have your top tips?

Whereabouts are you based? Makes a huge difference to grapes!

It’s all about heat and sunshine - there are only a couple of places in the UK where you can actually cultivate grapes

Oh yes sorry! Am in far south west , so mild and usually sunny. I saw a grape vine in someone else’s garden doing well so I thought I would give it go

Well, usually might be a strong word. Can be quite sunny probably more accurate

Reliably and on a commercial scale, yes. But I'm in Northern Ireland and successfully grow grapes outdoors. We got 34 (small) bunches from 2.vines last year.

I couldn't get my head round the RHS instructions either. If you can find the Beechgrove episode from last year or the year before when George explains grape pruning that's lovely and clear

Just to reassure you that it can take a few years for a vine to get established. Mine (outdoors in Manchester) has only produced bunches (numerous but may not be as full as I’d like) this year. This is its 3rd summer.

no im fucking miserable at it

My vine (in Manchester) is also 3 years old so @FigurativelyDying and I are vine twins!
I’m not really a “by the book” gardener and am training mine over a south facing awning, mostly for summer shade but grapes are a bonus.
Try to make sure there’s good air flow round the grapes and that the vines are supported, that’s about all there is to it.
My vine seems to fruit best on last year’s branches so I had hardly any grapes last year and loads this year.

The main way to prune grapes is this:

One stem grows from the roots to the top of where you want the plant to be. So if you are going to grow on horizontal wires, grow the main stem vertically up to the top of the wires. Keep the top trimmed back to the top of the stem.

Then where the wire is, grow one horizontal along that wire, so say you have 3 horizontal wires with the main stem in the middle, grow 6 side shoots and train them along the wire and cut all the other side shoots off.

Then the next year, in between each leaf node and the main stem along the horizontal stems, you will get new fresh stems growing, which when their first leaf node forms, will usually also grow a stem of flowers which then turns into grapes. You want one of these at each leaf node so after flowering and the first fruit setting, I trim off any additional flower bunches leaving just one at each node, and I also trim off any additional stem and leaf growth once around mid summer. This concentrates the energy into the fruit and not growing leaves.

So you leave the main vertical stem, the 6 horizontal stems, the shoots with flowers and then grapes. Everything else stem wise, keep trimmed back. Leave the leaves to do their own thing.

For a fan, treat each fan as a horizontal stem and just keep the main stems, the shoots with flowers and fruit and trim back all other stems.

Thank you very much for the advice - the outside fan one sounds like it is the right shape etc . I can’t see any flowers or fruit on the greenhouse vine which is one stem planted outside and then splits into two in the greenhouse running parallel along the roof. I will go and have a look now as I don’t think that sounds like I’ve done it right from shedmistress’s description.

Also, side note , I am presuming they are reasonably drought tolerant? Should I be watering regularly?

Had a look and I can see the original brown stem has actually got one offshoot that is trained along one wire- and that seem to just be one long stem with leaves on. Not sure if I am misunderstanding leaves and shoots?!
the other stem along the second wire is green but directly from the original stem / so the original stem turns green and carries on. Should I be cutting this back to where the stem is brown and just letting the side shoot continue. No sign of flowers or grapes anywhere .

The brown stem is last year's growth.

The green stem is this years.

You are not likely to get the stems growing out of those leaf nodes and hence flowers or grapes until next year. Or sometimes the year after.

Ok thanks very much . When the leaves go this year do I prune it or leave well alone?

Id make sure anything not growing along a trained wire or frame is cut back to above a bud growing from the stem that is growing along the trained wire or frame.

Nothing flapping about untrained.

We’ve got two grapevines, one produces white grapes and the other a red variety. The white is more established, it took 8 years minimum for it to produce fruit in any quantity.

We prune it mercilessly all summer long or it takes over the garden. We thinned 50% of the bunches off it last year and it wasn’t enough, we need to take much more of it this year and then the grapes we keep might be edible.

That’s all really useful thankyou. Used to waiting for fruit- waited seven years for a plum harvest then have had 4 years of plum harvests of 5 plums, 7 plums, last year approx 50 million, and this year, 2.

This is my vaguely trained shade vine. The main stem starts at the bottom of the trellis. All the grapes this year are up the trellis and on the front arch of the awning, all the vines heading upwards and along the fence line grew since about May. If this trend continues then next summer there will be grapes hanging down from the whole structure and I’ll have to actually do some cutting back of vines to stop them climbing the wall.

We have a very old grapevine in our greenhouse in the west of Scotland. It's difficult to kill! I never water it as the roots are under the cement floor. It needs a lot of pruning or it will block all the light and grow through the frame, breaking the glass. We usually get a good harvest although they don't always ripen completely. This year I think would have been a good one weather wise but for some reason we only have 2 bunches! Not sure why...

Can i ask why? I have a very wild, flappy two years old vine!

You are free to leave your vine as flappy as you want but the OP did ask how to prune it. If she'd said 'how do I leave it flappy' I'd have said 'just leave it flappy'.

There was a piece on grape vines this week on Gardeners Question Time, have a listen on BBC sounds it might be helpful

We have one it’s over 25 years old and produces loads of grapes, enough for 1 -2 dozen bottles of rough wine.

I did loads of reading with mine and concluded that careful pruning only matters if you're a commercial grower. Mine goes across 4 neighbours and produces loads of grapes

you’re right! My mistake.

I quite like mine tidy and tied in, but if I had one that was rambling, producing fruit and not in the way of anything i'd let it do its thing.