Backyard Growing

Hello all. I'm flirting with the idea of planting some vines in my backyard, and I'm trying to get a good idea of the area required. I'd want to do at least 5-6 gallons per harvest. I'm looking at planing Pinot Noir in the Santa Fe area. I think that the climate is adequate, and the vines won't get blocked from sun until the early evening.

From what I can tell, very good wine (who'd want anything else?) requires a yield of about 2 lbs/vine, and about 90 lbs are needed for 5 gallons, thus 45 vines are required. Spacing should be about 5 feet between vines in a row, resulting in 225 feet of planting length. Does my math sound correct? Also, comments along the lines of "you're insane, this will never work" are welcome as well.

resulting in 225 feet of planting length.

The craziest part of it all is being able to afford the size property in Santa Fe that will get you 225 feet of planting length!

Too true. I'm thinking that I may not be able to pull this off. I wouldn't want to plant every square-foot of available space on the whole lot.

Hi Ben,
I planted vines in my back yard 2 springs ago. A rule of thumb, for typical grape vines is about 1 gallon per vine, or about 13 lbs. per vine. Even at half this, and if you plant them 8 feet apart, which is a more typical spacing, in one long row, you'll need 10 vines and an 80 ft. row. Here is an interesting link that if you browse through it contains a great wealth of info:
Double A Vineyards

Ben, I'm strongly in favour of North Americans learning the art/craft of backyard viticulture and of making house wines from their own grapes. I think that it mirrors what we see in Italy and much of the Mediterranean countryside, and it's a truly effective way in bringing wine "down to earth", from the backyard to the dinner table. It's the sort of cultural pursuit that brings joy and that educates at the same time.

Good luck in your vineyard plans. I hope you have lots of fun putting it all together.

Ben,

Not sure I understand your statement. If you are looking at 5 ft. spacing between vines in an attempt to control vine vigor and keep yields low by encouraging vine competition for water, nutrients, etc. than 5 ft. is too far apart. Need to look to 3 ft. However, that will not matter if you are going to plant one long row as the roots will just spread out from the row as I assume they will have much more than 5ft on each side. Ideally you would need to put in multiple rows with vines spaced about 3 ft. apart on rows of 3-4 ft. apart if you are trying to use vine spacing to control vigor. The end rows will still be more vigourous but you could set up a block of 5 rows of 10 each or 4 rows of 12. A row of 10 can be run with just end post. A row of 12 will require a middle post. A row longer than 12 may require 2 line post per row.

At 5 ft between vines on a single row you should get large healthy vines and then you may not have enough canopy room on the trellis at only 5 ft spacings. You will also be able to get higher per vine yields at these wider spacings thus limiting the amount of vines required. You could always drop some of the fruit on these larger vines but these larger vines should be able to adequately ripen more than 2 pounds per vine.

Hope this helps.

After reading the info in the link I provided, it is recommended that vinefera vines be planted 4-6 ft. apart. The hybrids I planted are recommended for 6-8 ft. I have 4 rows of 150 feet. The rows are 7 feet apart with 8 feet between vines. So, back to your PN, if you plant 5 feet apart, from the info in the charts, 5 x 5 spacing would require 1742 vines per acre. At a bit less than 2 tons per acre you should get of 2 lbs. per vine. Again doing math, if the grapes yield 150 gallons per ton, we get 0.15 gal per vine, so you'd need 40 vines to make 6 gallons. Your math looks pretty good to me. Good luck and keep us posted.

Ben,

Go for it and good luck--stay young, agile, and fully prepared for weather and pestilence. Oh, cancel all your vacations...

Ben, a couple of cautions from experience.

We had a neighbor with a few vines in a residential area of New Jersey. Quite apart from the challenges of growing vines -- I'm impressed by Thomas's cautions frankly -- you need to consider the effect on and by neighbors' gardening.

Vines attract pests of various types which can also harm the neighbors vegetation -- we struggled mightily to keep our roses healthy and it required much more pesticides and different types because the bugs liked both the neighbors vines and our roses. Once he ripped out the vines, our roses did much much better.

(I understand that roses are used in Burgundy especially as kamikaze plants since the bugs prefer roses to vines -- I know I've seen roses planted at the ends of rows of Pinot Noir in California and elsewhere.)

And, neighbors can harm the vines by spraying their lawns or other vegetation with herbicides -- vines have broad leaves and are normally very susceptible to herbicides.

Your local conditions will vary of course, but neighbors are a factor to consider.

Happy growing.

Hi guys, thanks for all of the helpful hints.

I've got a question/comment about yields. From what I understand, when the grape production is lowered because the leaves/roots of the plant are limited, the wines won't be significantly better than wines from lush vines with large yields. The only way for make great wine is with low yields on lush vines, because then the small amount of grapes being harvested can absorb a large amount of flavor from the full vine. Especially with Pinot Noir, if you don't have this sort of lush vine/low yield scenario, you'll get weak, lackluster wines.

Is this correct? This was the reason for the relatively large spacing for only 2 lbs per vine.

I'd probably have to do two rows, but I could probably get away with spacing them closer together than normal since they'd both have an open side for growth.

I'm hoping that the Santa Fe climate helps me out with the maintenance, at least a little bit. Not much grows around there unless you make it grow, so I think that pests and such should be lower than normal. This could be a good experiment.

Ben, one other thought. I took a tour of wineries around Sante Fe a few years ago -- my memory is that they didn't grow many grapes in the area but brought the juice up from the the southern part of the state from around Deming and Las Cruces. If memory serves they did grow some along the Rio Grande.

It might be worthwhile talking with some of the grape growers in the area. I'm always impressed with how helpful farmers and gardeners are to newbies. Local knowledge trumps theory almost every time -- grape growing has a long, long history in New Mexico.

You've probably already checked this out, but if not the University of New Mexico has some interesting stuff about growing grapes in the state: http://cahe.nmsu.edu/pubs/_circulars/circ483.html

Regards, Bob

[Jenise]

Ben, you might also make a run up to Dixon and pick some brains from people who are successfully growing grapes in high desert conditions.

Not much grows around there unless you make it grow, so I think that pests and such should be lower than normal.

That certainly hasn't been my experience, Ben. I have a vegetable garden, many rose bushes of various varieties, young fruit trees, and assorted other flowers, and the pests are a huge problem. There are just some different pests to learn about!

And, of course, you realize watering will be a huge thing, and the water bills that go along with that in the City. On my side of the mountains, it's pretty much a non-issue.

Ben,
One thing no has mentioned so far - You need to have a good spray program if you want to be successful, and you need to start spraying the first year, not the third when your vines start bearing fruit. Your climate is much different than mine, I think, but if I want to grow vinifera I have to spray 12 times/year, maybe more in a wet year.
Best

Ben, I realize the climate where you are and the climate off the shore of Lake Ontario are quite different, but from the Warm Lake Estate website they boast the following:
Viticultural Practices:

Complete environmental friendly and green vineyard practices including: hand harvesting; manual weeding; no commercial fertilizers or herbicides; use of traditional fungicides (Bordeaux mixture); use of cow manure for fertilizers; manual pruning/shoot positioning/leaf pulling; use of green harvesting to control yields; yields maintained at or below 2 1/4 tons per acre of fruit.

So your 2 lbs. per vine is in the ballpark.

Interesting that copper sulfate is considered "green" isn't it?

I suppose it's because copper sulfate occurs in nature in copper deposits. Or, is it because copper sulfate is green in color?

Not much grows around there unless you make it grow, so I think that pests and such should be lower than normal.

That certainly hasn't been my experience, Ben. I have a vegetable garden, many rose bushes of various varieties, young fruit trees, and assorted other flowers, and the pests are a huge problem. There are just some different pests to learn about!

And, of course, you realize watering will be a huge thing, and the water bills that go along with that in the City. On my side of the mountains, it's pretty much a non-issue.

I was just figuring since most of my neighbors will have gravel "lawns", pests won't be too much of an issue. That may be a bad assumption. Yeah, water is certainly going to be an issue.

Interesting that copper sulfate is considered "green" isn't it?

I suppose it's because copper sulfate occurs in nature in copper deposits. Or, is it because copper sulfate is green in color?

Probably both Bob. In small quantities it's also used for treating wines that underwent reduction, which produces the rotten egg smell.

Ben,
One thing no has mentioned so far - You need to have a good spray program if you want to be successful, and you need to start spraying the first year, not the third when your vines start bearing fruit. Your climate is much different than mine, I think, but if I want to grow vinifera I have to spray 12 times/year, maybe more in a wet year.
Best

Alan, keep in mind that the need for spraying is both very climate-dependent and also variety-dependent. A climate that is dry in the growing season cuts down hugely on the number of pests to be dealt with and therefore the amount of spraying necessary. Where I was last located (the Sierra Foothills, California), for example, the only condition really worth worrying about was powdery mildew. Even that really needed only a few preventive sprays each spring with wettable sulfur since powdery mildew was really only an issue in the are early in the growing season. Typical summer highs are in the low 90's and humidity in the 20's and 30's, powdery mildew doesn't survive and even the sulfur is no longer necessary. Other than that, maybe one or two treatments of dormant oil in the winter was all I did and even then it was to prevent problems I'd read about in books, not because I actually ever had one. Bottom line, I sprayed maybe a half dozen times per year with pretty innocuous stuff and even several of those may not have been necessary.

Yup! I understand. I have downy mildew, powdery mildew, black rot, anthracnose and phomopsis to worry about. As a rule, if you spray for all those things you are also protected from anything else that might come along. Carbaryl generally solves all my insect problems. The point I wanted to make was, CA, WV or NM, ya gotta have a spray program.
Best

Ben E. wrote:

I've got a question/comment about yields. From what I understand, when the grape production is lowered because the leaves/roots of the plant are limited, the wines won't be significantly better than wines from lush vines with large yields. The only way for make great wine is with low yields on lush vines, because then the small amount of grapes being harvested can absorb a large amount of flavor from the full vine. Especially with Pinot Noir, if you don't have this sort of lush vine/low yield scenario, you'll get weak, lackluster wines.

There are significant differences of opinion on this point. There is the famous struggling vine theory that believes the only way to get quality grapes is for the vine to struggle. The is based upon the belief (fact?) that vines that struggle produce smaller berries than ones that are lush. This increases the skin to juice ratio of the berry and since the skins are where most of the good stuff is (flavor, aroma) that you have a better overall end product.

There are others out there that will argue that as long as the vine is in balance, you can produce higher yields per vine without any loss of grape quality. Believe this is based upon the work of Smart but would not swear to that in court. My understanding of this theory is that it is proper ripening that you are interested in and this can be achieved in many different ways but is dependent upon a balance of grapes to canopy. Such that you could have small vines producing smaller yields or large vines producing larger yields provided that everything stays in balance. Also know that their has been work done on the east coast with split canopies to show that you can get higher yields per vine with the same vine spacing without impacting fruit quality. In fact, I think that in some cases they claim that they got higher yields and better quality at the same time using split canopies. I may be able to find some of this work if you want it.

My concern with talking lush, healty vines at 5 x 5 spacing and performing green harvest to get them down to 2 lbs per vine is how will the remaining berries mature. I don't know but at that spacing would assume you could normally harvest 6-8 lbs per vine. Therefore, all the energy that would normally go to ripening 3-4x the amount of fruit would need to go somewhere. Not sure where that would go. My first two guesses would be you would end up with bigger berries or increased canopy growth. Bigger berries would change your skin to berry ratio and may give you a resulting wine that lack body. More canopy is going to catch more sun that is going to both shade your fruit and also create more energy to ripen berries that you do not have.

I know that there are commercial wineries that practice both green harvest and extensive leaf pulling to achieve the types of results you are seeking. I was under the impression that they did it that way not because that is what yielded the best quality period. Instead I thought that was the best way for them to get quality grapes out of vines planted at their commercial spacings. The vines may have been planted years ago and it is too costly for them to replant to higher density. Also, most commercial vineyards use tractors for most vineyard operations such as spraying, weeding, for havest, etc. such that the rows need to be wide enough to accomodate a tractor. The newer narrow tractors were built to allow the commercial vineyards to reduce the row space. However, I am not sure that there is a tractor out there that can work a vineyard spaced at a meter by a meter. This generally requires human labor which raises the production cost which in turn limits the commercial operations using high density planting. Even with that believe that some of the PN vineyard that Turley helped plant in RR and Sonoma Coast ended up planted high density and low trained. Again I would have to look that up again to be sure.

As best I can tell, there are people out there that believe many different things when it comes to vine spacing, yield per vine, and resulting berry quality. Sorry that I can not give you a definitive answer.

Forgot to add that your selection of clone and rootstock will impact yield per vine, quality, vigor, and the time it takes for the fruit to ripen. Unfortunately you are at the mercy of the nurseries on what options are available to you in a given year.

...As best I can tell, there are people out there that believe many different things when it comes to vine spacing, yield per vine, and resulting berry quality. Sorry that I can not give you a definitive answer.

Brian, it seems that grape growing is at least as complicated and variable as wine making. From what you stated about berry size and skin to pulp/juice ratio it seems this is more important on black skinned grapes used for making red wine than for white varieties. However, ripening and acid levels in whites are, I believe, more critical as whites generally do not go through ML fermentation. My experience with wine making tells me that the best wines, especially whites, are made from grapes that have properly ripened and if adjustments have to be made to accommodate less than optimal ripening, the wines just aren't as good.

Howie,

What you say makes sense as to much of what I wrote relating primarily to red grapes so I checked some things this morning. What I have on the struggling vine theory does not distinguish between red or white grapes. It appears to apply the same logic to both. It also uses the same theory to suggest that this is the reason that nutrient poor soils, steep hillsides, and growing in the coolest climate that will ripen the particular variety you are growing produces the best results.

I went to the internet to see if I could clarify this anymore and was not successful. In fact it only got more confusing. As mentioned before there are those led by Smart that agrue against this theory and for wider spacings and higher per vine yields. But I found that there are those who argue against the struggling vine theory and then use this arguement to justify higher panting densities based upon the theory that each vine will ripen less fruit thus putting less stress on the vine.

So I went looking at the research and there are many studies looking at vine spacing. Studies exist on both red and white varieties and look at just in-row spacing or both in-row and between row spacing and the resulting yields, grape qualities, etc. Some add in different trellesing methods. As you can guess, the results do not all agree.

So back to what I said before. Many beliefs. Conflicting results.

Brian