Grapevine Companion Planting

[RedSun]

This is my first year growing some grape vines in the backyard. Since the vines are still relatively small (growing to 7' tall now), I inter-planted with some vegetables, mainly okra, sweet and hot peppers. Everything is great now.

The first row are the table grape vines. They are spaced 7' within the row and are trained to TWC. Most of them should be trained to cordons next year. Since the first row is facing South, I'm thinking of only doing some limited companion planting in the first row and do not want to plant anything low in the 2nd row.

Now my question is that, would the inter-planting bad to the roots of the vines? I have 4 plants now between the two vines and I'm thinking of only planting two other plants within the 7' area.

Any other things I can plant that won't hurt the vines, or even help the vines?

 

[bchilders]

Hi Red Sun, most established vines (3 plus years) will not be greatly affected by having vegetables planted next to them wither regards to nutrients as their roots will be much deeper than any vegetable can get but I would worry about excessive shading and lack of air flow from having other plants in the rows. Some would even argue that any vegetation including grass is bad but as long as it is kept cut short I believe it is fine. Good air flow is essential in preventing disease and rot. I also do not like to mix the two, garden plants and grape vines, because of the differences in my spray programs for the two for insect and disease control.

 

[GreginND]

I saw a vineyard in Minnesota that planted strawberries under their vines.

What is your soil like? If you need more nitrogen, perhaps planing peas or beans to build the nitrogen.

 

[grapeman]

I tried having a strawberry bed in several rows of grapes for about 50 feet each. I did that for three years. At the end of that time the grapes in that area never thrived enough to get well established. The grapes beyond the berries filled out the grape trellis well and were bearing a small crop at year three. It took those vines two more years to catch up to the others that had no strawberries.

 

[RedSun]

I have 3 rows of first year vines, with table grapes in the front row (South) and hybrid wine grapes in the next two rows (North). I grow mainly pepper plants in between the vines. Some of the vines are planted after the peppers were planted. I manage everything how the grapevines are supposed to be managed. No fertilizer, no regular irrigation.

The soil is former farm land, clay based. Good drainage.

So far, I do not see ill effects from doing this. The Concord budded out very late, but it has reached 7' at this time. All the other vines are thriving other than the JBeetle issue.

Slowly I'm moving away all vegetables to other garden bed. But since the 2nd year vines will be growing TWC high cordons, I do not worry about shading. The peppers are only 2' to 3' tall. Not sure about there is any effect on air flow since the foliage will be high at this, no fruits. And I'll probably do not do much in the last two rows due to the shading of the vines in the front row.

I'll probably remove all the vegetables in the 3rd year, due to the shade of the foliage and the "air flow".

As for now, I just do not want to impede the development of the vine training. The digging is very limited, but I do not want them to compete for water and nutrients.

 

[garymc]

I planted some clover in my muscadines, but I wasn't sure if it would grow. It did.