what grows well with grape vine?

I want to plant grape vine along a fence (rabbit mesh). Is there a plant which is good in between the vine plants?

I suppose you could plant most anything with grapes, but grapes prefer to be clean-cultivated. Take a look at any successful vineyard....

Haven't tried this myself, but I've heard that hyssop is a good companion plant for grapes.  It's supposed to improve yields in vineyards.  Also good with cabbage and potatoes, as a trap crop for pests, apparently.

i have always grown climbing roses with my grape vines..although you do have to do some pruning from time to time to keep BOTH under control they work well together.

you can grow perennials around the bases of your grapevines too as long as they are welll mulched and well fed..

other vines that might work would be kiwi and or honeyberry?

Can you plant two climbers together? Kiwi is a very strong grower.
I might try hyssop, however I want to plant several grape wines and can't use that much hyssop. Roses sounds nice too.
I want to grow the grapes along a fence.
Clear cultuivated that means hoed. Could I mulch with stones instead we have so much.

good question!  i'd like to look into this more - we are putting in lots of grapes this year along a fence.  i am planning on just mulching them to start.  and using vine tubelings.  since in my case there will crabapples above the grapes i wonder if some woodland spring ephemerals would work...

I once read that lemongrass is a good companion for grapes.  I also can't track this info down again... arg!

I planted Yarrow, verbena, & crimson clover with mine. Mine is growing along a bit of a windbreak fence & also doubles as a border to protect some medicinal plants.  Within 20' sharing the same fence line is Golden Raspberry. 

Read that mustard greens grow well with grapes.  The wild ones are some of the first to colonize dry, bare soil, which is what grapes seem to like.  They will break up the soil with their fibrous roots. 

look at black walnut, if you are willing to go taller.

i have a hardy kiwi growing with a thompsons grape. i need to get 2 more kiwis as  i dunno if the male or female is the surviving vine..never fruited.  theres a black walnut grow right above them actually in my neighbors yard.
i jsut took a bunch of clipping from them both yesterday to try rooting...

theres also a Goji berry bush near it and 1 long "limb" is growing up into the grape pergola.

I hurriedly planted my Pink Reliance vine in my flowerbed(overflowing full bed already), which is next to the dog kennel(downhill...yea).  It shot off right out of the gate and grew a total of about 25 FEET in both directions in the bed.  I neglected to clip it back, but my plan is to harvest new starts this spring and end up with 10 or 20 vines to cultivate.  Grapes have a big root system, so I wouldn't put it with anything you'll be digging for, but otherwise don't worry too much about it.

There is no such thing as a kiwi vine, sorry.

Kiwi a small flightless birds, they do not grow on vines. They are also an endangered species and eating one would have you liable for criminal charges

what you are likely thinking of is kiwifruit ( note that it is one word).

the more you know ..

Well we just bought three kiwi vines from the farm shop - two in pink bags and one in blue.  I guess we should call them chinese gooseberry vines, but it seems that every country is entitled to change the name as they see fit. 

the reason, afaik that yanks seem to know them as 'kiwi', is because they were marketed by what at the time was the kiwi fruit company,  however the name of them was kiwifruit, or, yes, Chinese gooseberry.

however to talk about growing small, endangered , flightless birds on a vine is wrong. 

point of interest, if kiwi were not so endangered, they would be useful for keeping populations of insects under control, including beetle grubs. they find them a lovely snack.

meh,whatever , theyre known and sold here as kiwi vines. yes to pick nits theyre chinese gooseberry.  all i know of them is that theyre from china and were then seeded in new zealand in the 80's ...and mine have never fruited 

i saw some in a seed catalog today that were bright pink, pretty wild.

You shouldn't ask "what grows well with grape vine" 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.

The person who said "Clean-cultivation" aka monoculture is wrong. You have to spray, spray, spray and fertilize like mad without cover crops.

I'm from the river Rhine in Germany. Wine region.

Your name is German.
If I grow peas or beans there, is it meant as a green manure crop which you slash before flowering or is it meant as beans to fill your tummy?
I doubt that I could grow anything there which shades the vines too much because they would not ripen properly. We are in cool temperate climate, however not as cold as the Rhine and we are getting considerably more sunshine.
If I plant a vine every two meters or so along the  fence line then I would plant something in between which doesn't grow very tall. That might be beans, but this is something which must be intercropped or rotated.

dunkelheit, i am so glad you have written what you have that i could kiss you, maybe i am feeling emotional tonight, i remember seeing a photo or a bit of documentary about growing grapes in germany and seeing that the ground was not bare at their feet which pleased me enormously because I feel bare ground in orchards and vinyards must, bit by bit, impovrerish soils. and you have confirmed that in Germany they grow grapes with other plants  at their feetand also wha t you say as well as confirming somethign i have seen  means that maybe the healthier word will spead.
      The trouble with the television is that I never know what I am whatching nor have I got good at looking it up afterwardds and so I cant cheque it up when i want to write about it.

    I have read that euphorbias are good for apple trees because apples like potassium i think it was, well in these forums some big contributer commented that grapes need potasium, that if thyey have plenty then they are less likely to get moulds, so maybe euphorbia would be good with grapes too. agri rose macaskie.
 

Contrary to a prior post, I will say DO  NOT plant Black Walnut within 50 feet of a grape vine (or any other plant for that matter).  The Black Walnuts exeude a chemical from their roots called juglone.  It is a growth inhibitor which tries to keep anything else from growing near the tree.  Not all plants are susceptable to juglone, but most are.
Walnuts are selfish with their soil!

ediblecities: Normally the peas and beans are meant as green manure only. The idea is that you rotate green manure crops in a 3 times per annum cycle. Do you really have to rotate beans? I know that you have to reseed clover quite often because the mulch supresses it. That is why you mulch only near the vine's stems.

I once read that you can grow some wheat (allthough it is a gras) in between the rows of the vineyard so that the peas and beans can use them as climbing support to build biomatter faster.

Rose: You're welcome. I get a little bit sad myself when I see bare soil. Don't know why.

I know why i dont agree with it, it is because as a child I somehow got it into my head, from education, which i suppose was just like other bits of education, fairly neutral, that soils need building up, but for some reason for me it was  important and has stayed important. people who know me think, probably, that i am untidy but what seems to me gross inefficiency annoys me, maybe annoyed is not thre reight word i would like to change it, though i dont suppose i manifested that sort of feeling in the old days being a person who tried not to make a nuiscance of myself or who had been eduated not to.
 i understand though, that at one time a theory entered into farming that it was that is was  better to preserve plants from competition from other plants and so they took all other plants out of the way.  
      The other side  of the coin other plants will take up nutrients grapes might want is that plant covering means less erosion of soils so you should keep the ground covered too much erosion can't be good..
    Another part of the reverse side of this coin is that plants are the base matter of more organic matter, with which the soil gets built up and without which it gets spoilt, also for the plants that dont like too much nitrogen, dead plant matter builds up soils without adding as much nitrogen as manure would in a gentler way.
  Also and maybe most important plant matter in soil helps the soil to retain moisture important in the climates grapes are often grown in.

    Here the erosion is so bad and it is so inefficient to let soil go like that that i dont agree with it but i cant say bare soil makes me unhappy but the bare earth is often pretty., i like it i just don't think its healthy, especially with global warming.
    I enclose a picture were erosion has bared rocks and generally made the landscape more attractive. and places like this give me greaunholy satisfactiion , you should h ave satisfation from relating to others and i also get wedded to ccertain landscapes.

  I htink grapes might be a quick way to cover eroded land in dry countries they are meant to bare bad soils and the heat. agri rose macaskie.

Rocks are different. I like rocks. Just imagine how long it took nature to press them into that form. Too me, they are aesthetically pleasing.

          The bare earth were it is overgrazed rarther than ploughed, is full of stones that have had the earth trodden off them and I like stones as well as rocks. When i first came to Span there were no trees, the ones in the above foto quercus faginea and quercus pyrenaica, quercus ilex and junipers juniperus thr¡ifera and there are common juniper there to if you search for them, the oaks have grown from ones that were coppiced, cut down when they were still small , when their trunk had a diametre of about nine inches and then regrowing from the roots.
          A friend of mine said he liked the place, it reminded him of the woods in Canada, which he said he had seen i certainly had not and I thought they look like cabbage stalks to me not the Canadian woods, this friend is crazy!.
              The trees were  coppiced to use  the wood for fires and stoves and the encinas, the evergreen oaks, are pollarded and pruned ,they are the ones cut down to remain a small tree. among the long thin trees.
              The trees grew because much of the countryside had been abandoned, everyone had migrated to France or Germany or to the towns. some years before i arrived. When Spsain was treeless and even now in many places, you can see to the horizon, there are no trees to block the veiw and seeing a long way is pretty as rocks are, liking it is love of the desert but it is worrying if you are a responsible steward of the earth and it seems that education and maybe nature formed me as a person who worried about the health of the the countryside.
          I cant find a photo of  a bit of ground ground I like.  I was not focusing on the ground in the photos, if i could be said to focus at all. but i like the soil covered covered in stones that have been trodden clean of earth.
 
      To go back to grapes. They are linked to bad soils, the John Seymour organic gardening book says that the classic countries, Greece and Rome did for their soils, they weren't ecological and then all they cculd grow was grapes and olives and so they needed to trade wine and olives for wheat and that got them sailing around the mediteranean and in the end conquering instead of just trading. I imagine Spain was a good wheat growing place till they spoilt its soil too, it is said to have been wooded and so at first any spot they deforested would have had great soils.
 
            In the mediteranean the grass dries in summer so it does not compete with anything in that season.

            Would the herbs that grow in mediteranean countries be good for vines,  lavender, rosemary, and time, and such, which as companion plants might keep off bad insects? rose macaskie.
 

Interesting Roman correlation between Spain, wheat, and the grapes.  All of the Roman empire had to send wheat / grains for bread and food to Rome because at the time, the city couldn't support itself without products being brought into the city constantly. 

It would be an interesting ethnobotanical investigation to see what herbs and plants did grown naturally in a supportive relationship prior to, and post Roman / Greek farming. (Pre-Iron age). 

RustysDog wrote:
Contrary to a prior post, I will say DO  NOT plant Black Walnut within 50 feet of a grape vine (or any other plant for that matter).  The Black Walnuts exeude a chemical from their roots called juglone.  It is a growth inhibitor which tries to keep anything else from growing near the tree.  Not all plants are susceptable to juglone, but most are.
Walnuts are selfish with their soil!

I can not speak for all grapes, but i have a grapevine that has grown almost to the top of a black walnut tree. I have been pulling other vines off the black walnut. It would not surprise me if vines are not effected by juglone. Also have some sassafras, wild bushes, oak, tulip poplar, st augustine, english ivy, camellia and other plants growing in the root zone.

Going to cut back the grape vine in a couple weeks and move some mulberries, black raspberries, medicinals, herbs, vegetables, and other edibles by the black walnut. I am tempted to plant more black walnuts, but that will have to wait for the rest of the plan.

From the books, mulberries are one species that helps filter juglone. I understand the concern, just going on what I have seen and not going to be as stressed about black walnut killing new comers.

One plant for certain that will suffer within the walnut's root zone is tomato.  I have been told that most vegetables do very poorly in the vicinity.

Wild grapes are known to do OK, but every reference I have seen specified "wild grapes".  Before mankind began cultivating grapes, the grape vines encircled tree trunks.  Man's cultivation was primarily an attempt to keep the fruit within easy reach.

As far as herbs are concerned, the commonly used herbs in the US are the "Mediterranean herbs".  Their native growth is very much like most weeds.  In the wild, they are typically found on rocky hillsides with poor, thin soils, and are native to regions with little to no rain during the growing season.  They do well everywhere except wet soils.  They would probably do well around the walnuts (but plant some herbs elsewhere also, just in case).

Contrary to a prior post, I will say DO  NOT plant Black Walnut within 50 feet of a grape vine (or any other plant for that matter).

i know of six 15+ year old grape vines that are growing next to an even older black walnut. both species produces great crops. the grapes are actually very tasty.

How do you harvest them with a very looooong ladder?
We wouldn't get a single grape without netting it anyway, for me there's no point letting a grape or a kiwi or anything up into a tree.

ediblecities wrote:
How do you harvest them with a very looooong ladder?
We wouldn't get a single grape without netting it anyway, for me there's no point letting a grape or a kiwi or anything up into a tree.

I don't, the birds do. they were that way when I bought the property. Someone (or something) planted these vines a good while back. Been told if I cut them back and trellis them, they should produce well, but there is a chance they will not. Some of them are in heavy shade of pine trees, so I'm sure they have been their decades years. some grow on top of native bushes, some in black walnut trees, some in mulberry trees. Going to cut them all back this year. Maybe I should make something out of the leftover vine.

I can see this is an old thread, but I thought you might find this useful all the same:

Grape Vine companion planting:

Companion plants: Geraniums, Mulberries, Hyssop, Basil, Tansy

Basil - Herbaceous layer – pest repellent
Tansy - Herbaceous layer – pest repellent
Geraniums - Herbaceous layer – pest repellent
Hyssop - Herbaceous layer – helps plant growth
Chives - Root zone – inhibits fungal diseases
Mulberries - Canopy layer – beneficial companion plant

Bad Companions : Radish, Cabbage

(From Deep Green Permaculture's notes).

I planted two grape this fall. It is good to know what to plant with them.

I companion plant things in the onion/allium family with every thing.
They are normally soil pest repentant, I eat the leaves, they need little water and sun light, they also confuse insect/pest.
And they smell so wonderful.

Shane Ward wrote:I can see this is an old thread, but I thought you might find this useful all the same:

Grape Vine companion planting:

Companion plants: Geraniums, Mulberries, Hyssop, Basil, Tansy

Basil - Herbaceous layer – pest repellent
Tansy - Herbaceous layer – pest repellent
Geraniums - Herbaceous layer – pest repellent
Hyssop - Herbaceous layer – helps plant growth
Chives - Root zone – inhibits fungal diseases
Mulberries - Canopy layer – beneficial companion plant

Bad Companions : Radish, Cabbage

(From Deep Green Permaculture's notes).

Now I need to know if I should plant on the sun or shade side?

University of California Davis has lots of information about grape-growing on their website. They provided the research that fueled such rapid growth in the CA wine industry, so there is a lot there. They put out a book on cover cropping in vineyards that is really interesting, especially the part about when to use nitrogen-fixers and when you don't want that much nitrogen (it will make leaf and shoot growth at the expense of fruit.)  

As I scan these forums, I notice that people seldom seem to think of their university extension service, or the USDA. A lot of mistakes can be avoided if you make use of the research and experience available. You don't have t agree with their whole program or their goals to use the results of painstaking research and documentation!

What do you want, ground cover should be something that good for the soil, like clover, which will make pollinator happy.
Any aunnal can be planted away from the vines main trunk & root system, no till of course.
When you first make up the bed & plant the vines you can plant the asparagus between the vines, they are harvested at diffent times.
However the asparagus ferns may be in the way of harvesting grapes, but falls right into a food forest complex.
I like the strawberry & clover ideal myself, but you could mulch with hardwood clips & winecap mushrooms also.
I would not mix figs,apples,pears trees with grapes, unless you use espalier, grapes do best in full sun.

Matthew Fallon-  black walnut trees are allopathic and actually inhibit the growth of many plants.  In regards to your kiwi vine sex, you can tell by the flower whether it is male or female.  Just google a pic and you will see they look different.  Kiwis take a very long time to fruit especially if grown from seed, usually 5 years from seed.

My wild grape vines love growing up trees, and are probably planted there by birds roosting in those trees.  In my little apple trees' second year I already had to remove grapevines that were climbing them!  I planted some garlic around the trees which did OK, and tried some lentils which never grew.  For growing grapes in cultivation I've never discovered a good companion that kept grass out.  Grass is definitely bad, as it is for many fruits and veggies.  Clover is good but grass always seems to get into it here.  Grass gets everywhere there is not full-day dense shade, and even gets into some shaded areas.

Kiwi(fruit) doesn't grow in my zone 6, but Hardy Kiwi certainly does!  Mine followed the "first year sleep, second year creep, third year leap" adage.  Now it is trying to take over my entire deck: trellis, railing, gate, stairs, rain barrel, and over top of the roof as well as around the support posts!    I had to cut free a rarely used deck chair and table that had been partially engulfed last year.  Luckily for those vines, the fruit is absolutely delicious, like large kiwi-flavored green grapes.  I planted nothing around them, just replaced the stone "mulch" that was already there before the deck was built.  I've never fertilized them, and after the first year they've only been watered by the rain.  I may have to cut them back to just a couple feet off the ground since the vines are thickening and busting apart my wood lattice trellis.  They'll grow back quickly, I have no doubt!

About forty years ago, I put in a pool and then enclosed it with a chain link fence.  I find chain link not very attractive, but it's all that was available at the time.  In order to cover it up, I planted concord grapes both on the south-west and south-east sides.  They have been giving me so many grapes each year since; I love them.  Below, and the around the entire perimeter of the fence, I planted daylilies in order to add color and keep grass, etc. from growing and needing tending.  It has worked beautifully all of this time, and there is nothing tougher than a daylily!  The greenery  is maybe knee-high, but the flower stalk will grow higher and sometimes mingle in amongst the grapes.  It is really quite lovely!