Grape vine trellis questions

Hi,

I am from Turkey, zone 9B. Last year we mowed to another city. We have a small garden which I turned it into vegitable garden with several raised bed.

In our former house we used to have two types of Georgian grapes (black and green). One of our Georgian friend brought them as several cuttings. She told us they were for wine. So I have no clue about their varieties. They hanging down on a long and high pergola I made. They were extremely vigorous and tasty.  As we moved in a rush and the season was not right for cuttings we could not take any cuttings. We learned the new owner had to chop them down during renovation. We managed to take a few flimsy sticks of the black type.   Somehow several of them have rooted and planning to plant them in ground this autumn.  In our new house there is also a wild green grape was planted. It has five very thick trunks, planted just next to high wall and trunks were merged with the wall. All leaves were looking sick. Obviously its roots are no longer able to develop due to the wall.  As I am no longer young to dig out and transplan such a giant mass, I tooks several cuttings from it and reduced it to single trunk. I do not know its variety either.

With a help of a blacksmith, I created a thick iron frame for trellissing. As the space dictates this frame is not matching the conventional vine trellis.  We erected 5 frame poles, creating 4 sections. Each section is 190 cm (apprx: 6.2 feet) and total width is 8meters (apprx 26 feet).   These pole frames are 1 m (apprx. 3.2 feet) away from the wall. As we had to weld the top of the frame to a metal fence over the wall its height is 3m (almost 10 feet).

My plan is to plant two grapes of the same type side by side in the center of each section and train them into form two layers of cordonds each one. Cordons of one will go left and the other to right. The shoots of the existing wild grape had already reach the top of the frames. I will train total of 4 shoots to become cordons on the top of the frame  direct two to left and two to right. Its grapes will be hanging down just like my old pergola setup.

Now my questions.
1- As I do not know the varieties of them, I can not estimate if the new shoots will tend to go up or down. I will put  4 levels of  thick wire between poles. Thus each can act as cordon wire. The lowest one will be at 1 m height (3.2 feet). I will try to train the wines to form cordons over the 1st and 3rd wires and 2nd and 4th wires will act as catch wires. If the shoots tend to go downward I may be able to train new cordons over 2nd and 4th wires next year. Does this make sense?

2- My original plan was to tie seperate wires between each section and have their own turnbuckles to adjust their tension. We have a very deep economic crisis in the country. I am trying the keep the budget as low as possible. Also save myself from additional work. Now I am considering to one single wire and one larger turnbuckle per wire level. Considering the width (8 m or 26feet). Can that be sufficient?


Thanks

Welcome to the forum.

When we had our homestead we had two kinds of grapes, one green and one purple.

We never trellis our grapes so I can't help with that questions.

Anne Miller wrote: We never trellis our grapes so I can't help with that questions.

Thanks.

I hate any kind of vining plant especially in a small garden like ours to let them do their own things. It is to much mess for me. So I try to train them right from the start.

I grew a few Georgian grape varieties years ago and they really are vigorous, those things will take over if you let them. For a small garden a single wire trellis at about 1.5m height works well and keeps things manageable. The key is being ruthless with winter pruning, cutting back to just a few buds on each spur, otherwise you end up with a tangled mess by midsummer. Since yours are cuttings from an unknown variety I'd start with a simple vertical shoot positioning setup and see how they respond before committing to anything permanent.

Joao Winckler wrote: Since yours are cuttings from an unknown variety I'd start with a simple vertical shoot positioning setup and see how they respond before committing to anything permanent.

Thanks.
This is the reason I am trying to make the trellis as versatile as possible to be able to revert back to plan B.

Meanwhile I am not sure If a single wire will be sufficient as you mentioned. I remember those black grapes cuttings had climbed upto third floor around the house while waiting for me to build that pergola in their pots only in one season. Their yield were also unmanagebale for us as our sons were toddlers and consume them all back then. We were too busy with our daily jobs and boys to turn them in to wine. All our neighbours were reciving grape gift baskets every week. =) That is why I was thinking two layers of cordons. Anyway, It will take a few seasons for them to be established to for the second cordon. As long as the trellis be ready, I may decide based on their progress as you said.

Taylan Benker wrote:...
2- My original plan was to tie separate wires between each section and have their own turnbuckles to adjust their tension. We have a very deep economic crisis in the country. I am trying the keep the budget as low as possible. Also save myself from additional work. Now I am considering to one single wire and one larger turnbuckle per wire level. Considering the width (8 m or 26feet). Can that be sufficient?

From my experience with turnbuckles and wires... others may have different experiences.
A) The longer the wire, the higher gauge it needs to be. Normally, I use clothesline wire, which can handle that length for laundry, but grapevines are strong and heavy. If you support the wire at each upright it crosses, that may balance out that part of the issue.

B) You will need a much beefier turn-buckle for the longer wire than you would for shorter ones. I've had the hook end of turnbuckles bend straight in heavy duty situations.

C) Are you aware that there are two different styles of hardware for making the loops on the ends of wires?
One style is "use once" and you crimp a shaped piece of metal with pliers. We've both had those fail, and had to deal with needing to remove them which is difficult to do.
The other style is a U shaped piece that slides into a saddle shaped piece and there are two tiny nuts that thread onto the end of the U ends which are threaded to accept them. These can be removed, adjusted etc, but I'd put a good grease on the threads during assembly. Some of those tiny nuts have uncommon threads on them, so putting down a tarp to catch a dropped one is a *really good idea* (can you guess I've had issues in the past?) If you can afford this style, I would recommend it. The longer the wire, the more likely it will stretch over time, so being able to adjust the loop as well as the turnbuckle, seems like good back up planning. (Been there, done that...)

This is the sort I'm recommending. There's a "right way" to install them, which is easy to find on the web - the side the tail goes:



This is the sort I would only use if I couldn't find the ones above. They do the job, but have downsides.


If you know all this, no problem - there will be many other permies reading this who might not have met these fasteners or tried to use them.