Grapes

For those who keep grape vines, many interesting things are taking place at this time. Depending on the variety, they are blooming or getting ready to. You might have seen a pesky dark blue moth flying around which is indicative of a problem about to begin. These moths lay eggs on the leaves that left to their own devices can defoliate the entire vine. There are simple remedies available. Pick off the leaves that have eggs on them (requires lots of attention). Spray with BT worm killer. This is a bacterium that infects the gut of the worms. There are also systemic controls (key ingredient "imidacloprid") which means one treatment about this time of year takes care of it. We use the latter.


Black Monukka grape - much larger cluster than below.

 Black Monukka is an old variety from the middle east. It doesn't mind our heat and we've never had issues with pests or disease of any kind. Most grapes are fine with heat but you have to be aware of the acidity levels of the fruit as heat will tend to remove this characteristic, leaving you with a flat sugary juice (we don't make wine). They are vigorous, and will grow 20 feet or so in a season, and require cane pruning. If you want to cover an entire block wall, this is the ticket. If you want to harvest juice though, you might consider other varieties as the skins of these grapes is quite astringent/bitter and that flavor comes through in the juice. Beautiful burgundy red juice and they are nearly seedless.


Valiant grape in bloom

 Valiant grapes make a wonderful dark blue juice. The clusters are small and compact, and we have had less trouble keeping pests (like the western grapeleaf skeletonizer - a blue moth) under control. These have limited growth so they won't take over the entire yard, they bear a lot of fruit, and are early so you will harvest in July most years. It's actually a very cold-hardy variety, but we've found that it does well here because you can harvest before the worst of the summer heat sets in. Valiants require cordon pruning to spurs of three buds each. This is our favorite variety thus far, of those we have tried.


This year we are experimenting with two new grape varieties - Steuben and Baco Noir. Both are vigorous, high in acid, and have large grapes. We want them to cover the back wall of the yard, and are hoping the heat of summer takes down the acid levels enough to make a nice juice. When grapes ripen, what is actually happening is acid levels are falling off while sugar levels are rising. You want to harvest at the right time to get the best flavor - too early = tart juice, too late = pure sugar with little flavor, just right = sweet juice with wonderful flavor.

For those interested in grapes as a backyard adventure, we have much information to share. We have grown the following varieties:

Black Monukka (no pest issues but skins have bitter flavor)
Valiant (very sweet, dark blue juice, few pest issues, mild iron deficiency)
Frontenac (mildew issues, very sweet pink/magenta juice)
Concord Seedless (removed when we discovered they will not ripen evenly in hot weather)
Thompson Seedless (pure sugar flavor, birds love these and they are best eaten fresh)
Christmas (supposed to be like Concord for hot weather, but ours never ripened properly)
New York Muscat (on third year of this experiment, may be too warm for them to color or have any flavor)
Sunbelt (could not tolerate our soil pH and suffered severe iron deficiency)
Flame Seedless (issues with mildew and skeletonizers, we removed these in favor of Valiant and Frontenac)