Old vines....starting anew....?'s

[MaineGal]

Hi All,

As I noted on a previous thread, we have some very old vines that were here when we bought our house. Still have no idea what kind of grapes they are.

DH finally worked up the gumption to prune and clean it out this weekend. (We had tons of blackberry vines that had become intermingled, and lots of grape vines that had grown about 25 feet into the trees.)

After cleaning out all the dead grape vines, and the blackberry vines, we are now left with 4 or 5 large stumps (approximately 3-4 inches in diameter) that have fresh, budding, grape vines on them. Most of these vines are 8 or 10 feet long.

We definitely need to build some kind of trellis system for them, and wondered what others might recommend??

Also, there are a number of spots on the old vines where the plants seem to be weeping. Is this what others refer to as "bleeding"? Is there anything that we should be doing for this? Or will it simply stop on it's own?

Any other advice that you might think to offer would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks so much,
MaineGal

 

[grapeman]

How tall are your "stumps". Are they truly stumps or2-3 foot high head trained vines where the renewal canes originate from the central trunk? Either way, 8 -10 foot canes is probably too long . It depends on the type of trellis you desire. You can make an arbor and train the shoots that grow up and over it. You could also make a two or three wire trellis with the wires set a couple feet apart. You then train a cane each direction from the trunk and the shoots grow off that for fruiting in the current year.


The weeping is what we refer to as bleeding- their blood is called sap. Good luck with the project.

 

[OilnH2O]

PICTURES! (please!)