Hi grape growing friends,
With the Soccer World Cup fever at it’s highest here in South Africa, and my farm workers on annual vacation leave, I took some time off with my family as well. I traveled to a few places aroud our beautiful country and just enjoy all the visitors to South Africa and the great football. I hope some the readers of my blog were here and would love to hear what your comments are – maybe break the rule, to never talk about anything else than growing grapes on this blog, and put up a post for this?? Great game by Spain yesterday! I think it will be a cracking final on Sunday.
Anyway, now I’m back in business and back in front of my PC, bringing you some fresh grape growing info to start the second half of the year. With that said, let’s look at planting distances and row distances for grapes.
Gardening space is normally a big problem for home grape growers, so they cramp three to four grape vines into a 10 squire feet area in their garden. Of course this seems logical; they hope to get a bigger crop because they planted more grape vines, but unfortunately, this is where it all goes wrong!
Planting a row of grape vines or a vineyard, starts with proper planning. Before you even buy the cuttings, asses the area where you will plant the vines and measure the length of the row you will construct. If you plan to plant more than one row, then measure the width of the area as well.
During the first couple of years (year 1 to 3), grape vines that were planted with too little space between the vines, will most probably not show any stress or symptoms. As the vines grow older, the rooting zone and the canopy area gets bigger and sooner or later the adjacent vines will start to grow into each other.
When this happens, the canopy of the vine will compact and prevent proper airflow and sunlight penetration into the vine. Not only is this bad for disease control, but will also have a huge influence on the fruitfulness of the grape vine.
I’ve personally seen the effect this has on a grape vine. One of my friends decided to plant his vineyard 1.2 (+-4 feet) between the vines x 2.8m (+- 9 feet) between the rows. At first the vineyard was doing just fine, but round about year five, the production of the vineyard dropped by almost one third and in year six, it dropped even more!
We assessed the problem and decided that the problem was nothing else than unfruitfulness; the variety (Sugraone), he grew is genetically an unfruitful variety itself, which made the problem even worse. He decided to removed every other grape vine in the row, changing the planting distance to 2.4m x 3m (8ft x 9ft). The next season, the vineyard produced a normal crop and since then went on to become one of his top producing vineyards on his farm.
Now you may ask; “Then what is the best planting distances?” To answer the question, you will have to look at how you will train and prune the grape vines; how vigorous the variety grows and if you will use tractors and implements in your vineyard. For varieties you prune with spurs, I would recommend the absolute minimum between the vines to be 1.2m to 1.5 m (4ft to 5ft) and for cane pruned vineyards 1.8 to 2m (6 to 7 feet). The reason why I recommend a greater planting distance for cane pruned vineyards, is because it takes up more space on the canopy wires and we usually prune vigorous growing and unfruitful varieties with canes.
As said earlier, the distance between the rows depends on the way you will cultivate the vineyard and your variety so you will need to know the width of the tractor or spray pump and add about 15 to 20 % for the movement of the implements in the rows. If you will not be using tractors and other implements in your vineyard, the same rule as for planting distances applies to row distances.
What is most common planting distances for grapes?
I would recon it would be 8 to 9 feet between rows and 6 to 8 feet between vines giving you round about 600 to 800 vines per acre.
Here is an email I received from Judy:
First of all, thank you Judy for the email. You have inspired me to write this article so here is what I think you should do.
1st: 101′F is no problem for a grape vine, they will adapt to these conditions easily.
2nd: You will plant only one row, so the distance between rows is no problem 
3rd: The varieties you will grow are Concord and Thompson and both these varieties are cane pruned (long bearers). Thompson Seedless itself, is a variety that is known for it’s vigour and unfruitfulness, so if you read what I’ve said before, I would recommend a planting distance of not closer than 6 to 7 feet.
I know this is bad news for you, as you will have to make new planting holes, but rather do it right from the start than to have a row of grape vines that does not produce a proper crop.
Just to show you how we lay out our vineyards before we plant the posts and vines; her is a picture of one of my vineyards. You will see the chalk lines on the ground; this is where the the canopy posts will be planted. The planting distance I will use is 3m (between rows) x 2m (between vines).
Right, so I hope you guys have a learned something new from the article and again thanks for reading my blog and supporting the effort I put in.
Good luck to the Netherlands and Spain for the final match on Sunday!.
Cheers for now, and I will talk to you soon.
Danie
Remember, once you planted your grape vine, it will be part of your life for many years to come; so doing it right the first time is important!
Hi Dear Danie,
Hope you and your nice family are fine and enjoyed from your annual vacation. thank you for your useful information.
Regards,
Thanks Hakim,
Yes we did enjoy the break
This year we had 2 days of cold rain just after the tiny grapes appeared and the tiny grapes disappeared. I don’t see any new ones forming yet, did this early cold rain kill them or will they grow this year? I’m still hoping for the best. Of the 80 cuttings I planted only 15 survived, this is still good and I am learning much from experimentation. Next year I will have over 100, (that’s the plan) with 6 different varieties. I will keep you informed and will buy your program when I get a few extra bucks but things look good, happy planting everyone.
Hi Keith,
It is possible that the cuttings died because of the cold, but I cannot say that for certain but it is best to give some time to be shure.
Remember to plant out the cuttings in spring when the chances of frost and cold damage is less.
Danie
can anybody help we moved our vine 2 years ago to a different greenhouse sunk the root outside so it can go anywhere but no matter how we feed and water we can only manange pea size grapes p.s we moved it so it got more sunlight in the morning ? help!
Hi Jack,
I wrote an article on this on my blog some time ago. Here is the link, I think it will be useful.
Click here: http://www.my-grape-vine.com/blog/replanting_a_grape_vine/
Hope this will help
Danie
Hi, glad You had a good vacation. I have just bought My first vine. I am a bit thick cos, I dont really understand the 1st year pruning rules. regards John the grape is vitis vinifera Muscat is it a good variety?
Hi John,
As for the the variety; it depends where you live. Vitis vinifera grapes are for sure more tasty than the hybrid types, but are less cold hardy and are more susceptible to diseases.
I wrote an article on this as well;
http://www.my-grape-vine.com/blog/growing-grapes-your-first-year%e2%80%99s-goal/
Danie
Thanks for the invite—I only have two vines,a thompson seedless an a purple grape that I have forgotten the name of The purple grape is producing this year. I haven’t had any luck with the thompson, yet.
Hi Norm,
Thompson grapes take some time to get into production and remember, they bear fruit on canes, so you need to cane prune it.
Danie
3RD YEAR VINES AT MY HOUSE (ONE GREEN (FIESTA) AND 3 RED) GROWING GREAT BUT NO SIGN OF GRAPES. IS NOT THE THIRD YEAR WHEN THAT IS SUPPOSED TO HAPPEN?
Hi Jerry,
Read this article, maybe it will help
http://www.my-grape-vine.com/blog/no-grapes-on-my-grape-vine/
Danie
Dear Danie,
Hi!
It was great to read your article containing very useful information regarding the row distances of grape vine.I wish every body in this business were like you:helpful and knowledge spreading.
May the Almighty God fulfill you and your family with his promises and bestow on you his many blessings!
With best regards from Iran,
M.Kazemi
Hi Mohammed,
Thanks for the kind words and thanks for the good wishes – I hope He will bless you too.
Take care
Danie
Thanks for the good information. I have 10 concord vines in Bridgeville Delaware. I planted then 3 years ago. I planted 5 vines each in two rows. My spacing is just a little wider than you recommended. I got 5 gallons of pure juse from the grapes last year. The wine had a little bite on the end of it. It was pretty good overall with a good kick. The grapes are doing well eventhough they have not fully filled in the trellis yet. I have to watch each day to be sure the japanease bettles are not on them. The bettles will eat the vines real quickly. I use seven spray to control bettles. Thanks again for the info, Jim
Hi Jim,
It’s my pleasure to try and help you guys.
As you said; if you have the space, go even wider than I recommended – you will only see better results.
Japenese beatles can be a problem – keep you hands on them or they will destroy your grape vines.
Thanks for the reply
Danie
Hi Danie,
My wife and I are pretty new to the growing of grapes. We have only been at it for 2 years, and even added a couple of new plants this year. My question is in regards to Japaneese Beetles. We are having a devil of a time keeping them off of the vines! I tried a spray which was targeted to killing them, but darned near killed the plants as well. A dust worked better, but is there anyway to avoid these insects without the insecticide. I would prefer to be doing thing more organic in nature. Would using Praying Mantis’s solve this problem next year? Please give me a few ideas. Thank you, and your blog is a great one by the way!
Al Roessler
Amherst, Ohio