Do you want a waterfall formed by grapes?

Grape Waterfall

How about it? Do you feel itchy hands after reading this? If you want a grape rack like this, first of all, you need to plant one or more grapes at home.

Grape cuttings

Grape potted plants are generally propagated by cuttings or layering. Propagation by seeds will greatly increase the time it takes to bear fruit, so it is not recommended. Next, let’s talk about the techniques on how to quickly root cuttings.

first step

First, prepare the necessary bottles, scissors, branches, cotton, flower pots, sand, etc.

The second step is to cut the strips into pieces.

Leave two buds on each cut piece used for cuttings. When cutting strips, please note that it is best to arrange the cut on the bud, which will enhance the formation of callus tissue.

Step 3

Fill a small bottle with water, insert the cut end of the strip into the bottle, exposing two buds, and fill the gap between the bottle mouth and the branch with cotton.

Step 4

Then bury the entire bottle of sand in a large flowerpot, leaving only the part above the bottle mouth exposed. Keep the sand moist.

Step 5

It will take about 20 days to a month for a large number of roots to grow near the bottle mouth.

Step 6

Just plant the rooted seedlings directly in the flowerpot and you're done!

Daily maintenance tips for grapes

Select pot

Generally, clay pots or wooden barrels with a diameter of 1 to 1.2 feet are used to grow grapes. Do not choose airtight pots. 1-2 years after planting, move the grapes into a larger pot. While ensuring that the root ball does not fall apart, cut off some of the dead roots and tangled and dense roots. Fill the new pot with soil, tamp it down, and water it thoroughly. Afterwards, turn the pot over every 3-4 years and thin out the roots appropriately to keep the grapes growing vigorously.

Pot soil

Choose nutrient soil made by mixing 1/3 well-rotted horse manure or sheep manure and 2/3 garden soil (or sandy soil), fill it into the pot and tamp it down, water it thoroughly, and plant it after the surface is dry and loose.

variety

Choose the right varieties for potted plants: you can choose early-maturing and mid-maturing grape varieties with good quality and beautiful tree shape (early-maturing varieties can be cultivated to produce secondary fruits, i.e. two harvests a year), such as: Zaoyan, Beauty Finger, Kanta, Saba Pearl, etc., and mid-maturing varieties: Rose Fragrance, White Banana, Red Perfume, Jingya, Jingxiu, etc.

Watering

Water sufficiently once every 3 to 4 days during the budding period in early spring; water sufficiently once every 2 to 3 days from June to July; water sufficiently once or twice during the dormant period in December.

No watering or fertilizer is allowed during flowering period. Grapes are afraid of waterlogging, so do not water them randomly. If the humidity is too high for a long time, the roots will suffocate and rot.

Fertilization

During the budding, flowering and fruit setting stages, apply sheep manure (other decomposed animal manure can also be used) along with water once and spray ammonia, phosphorus and potassium fertilizers on the leaves once. It is especially necessary to spray zinc fertilizer on the leaves once before and after flowering.

After a few years, you can use some phosphorus fertilizer, nitrogen fertilizer, urea, etc. to improve the soil. It is not advisable to apply too much manure each time, but you should add some fertilizer as much as possible every time you water.

sunshine

The average sunlight exposure time for grapes should be at least 4 hours a day in order to synthesize the necessary nutrients through photosynthesis. Therefore, the south balcony is a good choice.

ventilation

Ventilation is especially important during the ten days or so of the grape vine flowering period to help pollination. Otherwise, even if the fruits are produced, they will fall off.

The wind mentioned here is not just ventilation in the sense of changing the indoor air, but a certain amount of wind so that you can feel the breeze on your face.

Grape pruning tips

Pruning grapes is actually quite troublesome because there are too many professional terms. Huahua will not explain them one by one here. I will mainly share the method that a grape expert has figured out.

Pruning after planting

In the first year after planting, let it grow, focusing on cultivating one or two main vines; in the second year, select two of the strongest side branches that grew on the main vine of the previous year and keep them as main vines. In this way, a tree will have at least 4 main vines in total.

The remaining side branches should be shortened after leaving 3 buds on each branch during winter pruning. After the required tree vigor is basically formed in the third year, the main vine should be controlled and shaped by pruning: all branches grown in the current year should be regarded as side branches, and during winter pruning, three buds should be reserved for each branch before being shortened. From now on, you should follow the requirements of the third year.

Spring bud removal

When the spring buds grow to 3 cm, remove the 3 buds in the middle of the 5 adjacent buds on the main vine, leaving only the 2 buds on both sides as fruiting branches;

Among the three buds that grow from the side branches that were pruned last year, remove the bottom two (the two inner ones are weaker), and only keep the top one (the outer one is stronger) as the fruiting branch. The result of this operation is to remove about 60% of the future branches in the entire tree. To ensure the quality of the fruit.

Winter pruning

After entering winter, the fruiting branches that grew that year (some may not bear fruit) will be kept as the main vines, and the rest of the branches, no matter how long they are, will be pruned back to only 3 buds. The result of this operation is to slow down the growth rate of the fruit trees, while also extending the life of the fruit trees by controlling production.

Winter pruning should be done 2-3 weeks after leaf fall and 3-4 weeks before spring sap flow. Pruning too early will affect the return of nutrients, while pruning too late will easily cause damage. Bleeding can cause serious nutritional loss in the grape vine, affecting the germination of buds and fruiting in the same year. No further pruning should be done after the sap flow period begins. Pruning should be completed between the time when nutrient return to the grape branches stops and one month before sap flow occurs.

In the spring of the second year, when the soil temperature of the root distribution layer rises to 6-9℃, the roots begin to grow vigorously. If pruning is done at this time, sap flow is likely to occur. Although it will not cause death, it will have some adverse effects on the growth of grapes because there are more nutrients in the sap.

Grape trellis construction

Grapes are climbing plants, so there must be a rack for them to climb. I believe everyone still remembers the grape rack at the beginning, but that is not something that mortals like us can easily do, so Huahua has found some relatively simple ways to build a grape rack.

Hair

Leave 60-100 cm of the main trunk and 3-5 fruiting mother branches at the top to generate 6-10 fruiting branches. Fix a horizontal circle frame with a diameter of 30 cm at the same height as the main trunk, and tie the new shoots and fruit clusters evenly to it, letting them hang loosely.

Funnel-shaped

Shorten the main trunk to 10 cm, and evenly tie the 3-4 new shoots that sprout to a 100 cm high funnel-shaped support. These new shoots will serve as the main vines. Pinch off the top side shoots when they grow to about 50 cm, and pinch off the rest when they have 1-2 leaves. Leave 1-2 fruiting branches on each main vine and distribute them evenly on the funnel rack.

Although it is not as spectacular as a large grape trellis, it is better than nothing, right?