I remember reading about mulberry and grapes grow well together. Has anyone try this and what other plants work well together with grapes? When I lived in California I went up to Napa valley area. The area is known for wine and if my memory serves me right, few vineyards had grass or anything below the grapes. I known a man in my city who have a good size vineyard and uses a lot of toxic fairy dust around the grapes. In between the rows there is grass but under and around the grapes none. I have always wanted to grow grapes in a guild but finding the information can be hard and harder to find the plants to plant.
You should never forget that every creature has its purpose in the cycle of nature and can also be very important to humans. Sepp Holzer's Permaculture
Jan Sebastian Dunkelheit wrote:You shouldn't ask what grows well with grape vines; the question must be: What companion plants improve the taste of the grape!
Important is that the ground is covered all year round and that the ground cover doesn't compete with the vine's water thirst. Cucumbers would be a bad choice.
Malva, vicia, phacelia, red and white clover, peas and beans are good. Use them as mulch. Suppress high growing gras. Low growing gras is okay but you should not support it. Gras in general is bad for the wine taste. Mulch high around the vine stems but of course leave the stems free. Do not mulch in a wide radius around the vine stem.
Invasive plants are Earth's way of insisting we notice her medicines. Stephen Herrod Buhner
Everyone learns what works by learning what doesn't work. Stephen Herrod Buhner
I did plant peas this year around one of my grapes. I will try beans and clover too. Where I live mulberry grow wild. I wonder if birds using the tree as a home and pooping on the ground will help in fertilizing the grapes?
You should never forget that every creature has its purpose in the cycle of nature and can also be very important to humans. Sepp Holzer's Permaculture
If you are concerned about grape vines overwhelming the trees they are growing on, a volunteer tree that takes to well to pollarding seems perfect.
I didn't plan it but I have a mulberry tree with as many grape leaves on it as mulberry.
The mulberry is one I have been pollarding, but I left it alone one year and boom, the grape vine invaded.
This combo had given me a bunch of grapes, though the vine is wild, so the grapes are tiny,sour and seedy
I've been drying mulberry leaves, grape leaves and grapes all summer, as well as throwing them to the chickens.
Mind you, the vine I carefully pruned and trained to a wire grapevine has produced no fruit whatsoever.
At my yarden I just hacked back one mulberry tree, and transplanted a grape vine next to another.
I'm guilding with what I have, so it's become mulberries/grapvines/black berries.
I hope to add Siberia pea shrub in the future, or maybe subsitiute them for the mulberries, since these volunteer mulberry trees aren't producing berries anyway.