Have You Ever Wanted To Know  How To Grow Grapes?

There are many different varieties of grapes to grow, which one you decide to go with will depend on what you want to achieve from your grape growing expedition. There are different reasons that people want to know how to grow grapes, some of them are because:

• they know that growing grapes themselves will help them to make their own perfect tasting wine
• they know that there is money to made in growing grapes and they want a piece of the pie
• they want to grow grapes for themselves, their friends and their family

We are specifically going to find out about growing grapes for the purpose of making fine tasting wine. One of the first things however that you will need to figure out is the kind of wine that you want to drink at the end of the process, red grapes for red wine or green grapes for white wine - this is an important decision and can only be made by you. However the next choice is more a decision based on location, climate, time and necessity.

We will not go into to much detail here as we are more discussing how to grow grapes and not how to choose grapes. But there are two varieties of grapes available for wine and they are the European grape or the hybrid grape.

Now lets get into how to grow them:

One of the first things that you want to do is make sure that you have a proper growing site, which will  include access to full sunlight and nutrient-poor soil. Why nutrient-poor soil? The quick answer is that it will stress out the vine and make it produce small grapes which is what you want when making wine.

Make sure that you have a nice space  between each vine, this could be around 8 feet or so as they need the room to grow well. A trellis will be needed for the best growth results, it may need to be moved around a bit once the vines are on it to get them growing just right.

If you’re vineyard is on a slope, all the better as this will help the grape vines have a good way to drain off the extra water, good drainage is very important. You will find that when you grow grapes that they do not need a lot of water, however in saying this - in the dry season you may need to water them about once a week. When the grapes change color you can stop watering them until all the leaves fall off, it will be getting close to winter about this time and you will need to water them again before the ground freezes so that they can last through the winter.

Birds and other pests can be a problem, they will also like the grapes that you are growing so you might want to put netting over your grape vines. Double netting is recommended and there are a few different net options for this.

Pruning is one of the most important parts of knowing how to grow grapes. Your grape vines will need pruning every year, if this is not done correctly then your grapes will grow and ripen unevenly. It is not easy to get the perfect crop but with a bit of practice and research it can be done.

The last thing to look at is the sugar and ph levels, this will have a huge effect on the taste of your wine. This is also why every wine is different.

Now get out there and start your own grape vineyard.