Backyard vineyard done!

I finally got my vineyard done. I planted 6 muscadine vines (carlos, big red & isons) and 2 black spanish vines. I went with a double geneva curtain trellis system. At my last house I had planted one vine on a double geneva, two on a chainlink fence and one on a single wire trellis, the double geneva far far outdid the other ones for vine growth and yield which is why I chose the double geneva curtain. Probably not the best choice for the black spanish but I didn't want to do two trellis types. The black spanish was kind of an afterthought, a friend at work convinced me to try them out, I still gotta figure out how to prune them. I planted 2 year bareroots from Ison's in Georgia. They supplied my muscadines at my last house and I had a good experience with them. I put in a drip irrigation system (black hose at bottom of posts) on a timer too. Hopefully I'll get some good vine growth this year and next year I'll get a decent yield. I did space my posts 15' instead of the normal 20'. That was all the room I had so that's what I used for 8 vines. That'll still be 30' of vine per plant so I think it'll be ok.

Looks great!

I know that the black Spanish grapes grow well where we are currently, as well as muscadines, but there is a place near Refugio that is setting up a small commercial winery and that had some type of white grape that they were trying and said it was purported to grow well in S. Texas. I wish I could remember what kind it was!

Yooper said:

Looks great!

I know that the black Spanish grapes grow well where we are currently, as well as muscadines, but there is a place near Refugio that is setting up a small commercial winery and that had some type of white grape that they were trying and said it was purported to grow well in S. Texas. I wish I could remember what kind it was!

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I went on a trip to Fredericksburg a couple years ago and went to five or six wineries. Every single one of them had bought grapes from somewhere else because they were in the process of re-growing all their vines. They had all been wiped out by pierce disease a year or two before. Black spanish and muscadines are supposed to have good disease resistance for this area. Hopefully I won't have to use chemicals to get good yields.

Yooper said:

Looks great!

I know that the black Spanish grapes grow well where we are currently, as well as muscadines, but there is a place near Refugio that is setting up a small commercial winery and that had some type of white grape that they were trying and said it was purported to grow well in S. Texas. I wish I could remember what kind it was!

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Probably the blanc du bois grape which is blowing up in Texas vinyards. It has no problem with the climate especially drought conditions if your using drip irrigation and its resistant to pierce disease. We have an acre of it at our ranch.

Yes, I think that's right! I just couldn't remember it at all.

Their vines must be about 3 years old now, but I haven't stopped by in a long time to see how it turned out. The drought was pretty intense the last time I was there.

Yooper said:

Yes, I think that's right! I just couldn't remember it at all.

Their vines must be about 3 years old now, but I haven't stopped by in a long time to see how it turned out. The drought was pretty intense the last time I was there.

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The vinyard/winery that we got our cuttings from to start our vinyard actually lost a huge amount of production due to a late freeze and hail last year. They had to buy outsoursed grapes also, but the company they bought from came up short becasue of the huge demand of other winerys having issues becasue of the freeze and disease.

Wish I had some more room I'd try those blanc du bois out too, it'd be nice to be able to have enough variety to do some blends, I can probably do a little with 4 varieties.

Cant wait to see a pic of it grown out. Nice job!