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leedsboy81

Junior
Joined
Sep 25, 2022
Messages
2
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1
Location
Western Australia
Hello,

Long story short, moved into a rental property in Northern perth suburbs, WA, and after removing long overgrown weeds and fixing up the neglected garden, what we thought was a small dead tree turned out to be a grape vine, which has since flourished with a little support.
It is now at the stage where grapes have started appearing but now there appears to be some disease or something. We have never had any experience with grape growing or anything similar so any information or advice would be appreciated. It is just a single vine in our back garden - no idea what variety it is or anything.

I can add more photos if required.

Thanks in advance
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Welcome to WMT
Your second photo shows some white which is typical of fungus. Seven and eight years ago I would try to go organic which means spray with sulphur or Bordeaux mixture of lime sulphur.
Today I have given up on organic and will spray early season with mancozeb (US legal/ this stops 60 days before picking) and then switch to benolate or sulphur or … what is legal in Australia. For getting a small crop out you could let it go, For a larger crop disease control is important.
Is the plant healthy? ,,if so this shouldn’t be killing the plant
What is your humidity? ,,, a dry climate is easier managing fungus, the spores don’t like low humidity, US legal let’s me spray more with this climate/ fairly uniform yearly rain.
As a new grape grower, ,,, when I had one mature plant I could fill a three gallon carboy/ twelve liter. Grapes grow on second year wood, how it is pruned influences yield.
 
Welcome to WMT
Your second photo shows some white which is typical of fungus. Seven and eight years ago I would try to go organic which means spray with sulphur or Bordeaux mixture of lime sulphur.
Today I have given up on organic and will spray early season with mancozeb (US legal/ this stops 60 days before picking) and then switch to benolate or sulphur or … what is legal in Australia. For getting a small crop out you could let it go, For a larger crop disease control is important.
Is the plant healthy? ,,if so this shouldn’t be killing the plant
What is your humidity? ,,, a dry climate is easier managing fungus, the spores don’t like low humidity, US legal let’s me spray more with this climate/ fairly uniform yearly rain.
As a new grape grower, ,,, when I had one mature plant I could fill a three gallon carboy/ twelve liter. Grapes grow on second year wood, how it is pruned influences yield.
Thankyou so much for your detailed reply!!

The climate here is normally 1 month of rain (around july) and then dry the rest of the year, but it has been abnormally humid this year for 2 months longer than usual. Starting to get dryer now.

The vine itself seems very healthy and is producing lots of shoots. I have counted around 25 bunches of grapes on this vine so far and still new shoots are growing everywhere

When we first realised it was a grapevine, we did cut off several old dead branches and left tall the ones that had new buds growing as we didn't know how best to manage it. I built a trellis type structure and have supported all new branches with string/ redirected their growth away from each other.

Whoever planted it here was clearly not here much longer afterwards (its a rental house), as the vine was left to do its own thing over the years.

The bird netting is to stop the local ravens and galahs as they try eat anything we grow!!

no idea what the variety is. Added more photos
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