Vine spacing.

[bhoenisch]

For a backyard hobby grape row or two, is there really a detriment to tight spacing between vines, say around 3-4 ft? I was looking at this story on a small vineyard in winnipeg Manitoba http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/ho...-gives-you-grapes-231262581.html#&gid=1&pid=1 and thought the spacing looked small but the vines looked fine. Could vines be planted at 3 ft spacing, then if needed transplanted to allow 6 ft spacing if vigor is too much of an issue. These would be cold hardy hybrids. Just a thought at this point, not a plan.

 

[grapeman]

Why do you want tight spacing? You just need to buy more vines. The cold hardy varieties mostly do fine at 6 to 8 foot spacing between vines.

 

[RedSun]

If the soil is poor and dry, with less vigorous vines, tight spacing makes sense. But you'll have more vines to manage and more labor intensive.

 

[grapeman]

If the soil is poor and dry, with less vigorous vines, tight spacing makes sense. But you'll have more vines to manage and more labor intensive.

That is my point. Hybrids are not less vigorous vines so even with poor soil, they will fill 6 feet.

 

[GreginND]

Perhaps the OP wants more different varieties than they can get with 6 foot spacings.

 

[RedSun]

The OP was talking about the "Backyard Orchard Culture" or BYOC, which is often discussed with the orchard/gardening folks. It is very trendy and there is quite a bit following.

The concept is high-density planting. You plant dwarf fruit trees or prune normal trees to fit in tight space. Some even plant 3 trees in one hole. So you get higher yield in a small backyard. A lot of folks do not have big yard, but they want a lot of fruit varieties.

For high density grape planting, the trellis has to be taller, 7' or taller. The cordons will be short, or vine training without cordons (head training?).

But from what I know, for grape vines, high density planting does not yield higher than normal (like 7'x7' or 8'x8') spacing.

 

[bhoenisch]

Actually, my interest in having closer spaced vines is for two reasons. I want to try as many varieties as possible to see which ones grow best. But also, I'm thinking it would be easier to sell the idea of more vines to my wife if they would not require new or extended rows. Probably not the best reasons, but after seeing the picture in that article from Winnipeg I thought maybe it's not a bad idea. My depth perception is horrible though, so maybe those vines aren't as close as they appear. Here's the image if the link in the op didn't work.