Help with first year of grapevine

[technium]

Hi All

I am glad I found this forum.

Ive never been much into gardening, a load of shrubs around and thats it done, that was until my granddaughter came along. She is into fruit so I decided to put some fruit bushes in for her to pick the fruit and we now grow Black Currants, Gooseberries, Raspberries, Red Currants and Strawberries and this is there second year so we seem to now have a steady supply ready for her each weekend she visits. I have also always wanted to grow grapes but never had any luck. This year I decided to give it another go and it seems to be growing well. I have it growing up one wire and all other tendrills etc have been removed as its grown so now its already 7ft tall with nothing but leaves all the way up and no other branches coming from it. I would like to have it next go horizontally across the top of the windows but I believe I am meant to wait until the 2nd year before I start doing that training.

My question is do I keep pinching out the top to stop it getting any taller or just leave it but dont wire it (as I dont want a 15ft wire going up the wall of the house) or do you have other suggestions?

thanks in advance for your advice.

Colin

[burnie]

Hi Colin, have a read of this it may help.
How to grow grapes / RHS Gardening

[ameno]

If the top is flexible enough you could bend it down to one side and have it start growing sideways like that, then next year train a new shoot in the other direction to get the two horizontal shoots you want.
If not, I would just keep pinching out the tip. It will likely start growing side shoots this year at some point, and those may get large enough to be worth starting to train sideways this year. If they don't reach at least pencil thickness by leaf fall, though, then it won't be worth keeping them, and you will be better off pruning those side shoots out over winter, then letting fresh growth next year make the horizontal stems.

[Deltawhiskey]

Hi Technium,

Do not pinch out the tip. Instead train the vine to where you want it to grow while it is still green. There is no need to cut off the tendrils because they take nothing out of the growth, or remove side shoots. The vine needs as much leaf area as you can give it in its first year. In Winter cut back any soft growth to ripe wood. Next spring allow the shoot nearest to the cut end to extend and continue training it to where you want it to end and then pinch out the tip. Allow the side shoots to grow where you want fruit. That will be on the horizontal run and remove those from the vertical. The shoots from the horizontal are where you will select spurs to carry grapes in the third year.

David