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This is a collection of items from my Blog that are always relevant.

Notes On The Photos Of The Varieties On My List

 In taking photos of as many of my grape varieties as possible this

year, 2006, I found that many are distinctly different than usual. In

most cases the differences aren't enough to be a problem, though it

means the photos may look better than they would have in a "normal"

year.

 For example, "Bronx Seedless" usually has lots of different sizes of

berries. Some large ones, some small ones, etc. This year, the berries

are quite uniform. So the photo makes the variety look better than 

usual.

 The real corker was finding that the "Royal Seedless" wasn't. Oh, it's

the right variety, as I've had it for more than 25 years. But this year

it has full, normal seeds in all the berries.  The berries and clusters

look normal in the photos, except they are larger than usual.

 How can that be? Because Royal is a parthenocarpic seedless grape.

That is, the berries will set and develop without ever developing any

seed. Many old female flowered grapes will do this, though Royal isn't

a female. The more common kind of seedlessness is called

stenospermocarpic, in which the seed starts to develop, then the embryo

aborts and the seed stops developing. In a parthenocarpic grape you

won't find any sign of a seed, while in a stenospermocarpic grape,

there is always a small seed remainder.

 Not this year. Something in the conditions allowed the Royal Seedless

to develop full, normal seeds. One or two seeded berries can be found

most years, but I've never seen this grape produce ALL seeded berries

before.

 I'll take another set of photos in 2007 when they will (hopefully)

be

normal again.

"Cascade" Is Back.

   A year or so ago I took the French Hybrid wine grape "Cascade" off

my

list because there was a question if it's identity was correct. I'd had

my own vines removed by a road project a few years ago and was using

cuttings from someone else who'd gotten the material from another

source. Except that it soon became apparent my new source didn't have

the same variety I had been growing. Now I have some vines in bearing

enough to see that I have the correct Cascade again. Or at least it's

the same as my original vines that were removed. I won't have much for

a while as the vines have to grow, but at least it will be back on the

list this winter, with any luck. And I've taken photos of the "new"

ones so they will be included in the photos linked to the variety list.

No Grapes for Florida.

 I'm sorry to tell potential customers from Florida that I have no

varieties that will succeed there. A few can resist fungus diseases,

but because of the mild winter, the bacterial pest Pierce's Disease

will devastate them.  Varieties with good resistance elsewhere fail in

Florida because there is no cold.  Even a short winter will retard the

PD organism enough to give the vines a chance to "catch their

breath",

but without it, even highly resistant vines will eventually decline.

 For years I've offered a few varieties that I thought would hold up in

Florida as they were some of the toughest grapes around - America,

Munson, and several others. Now I find that they weren't tough enough.

A study of such varieties done in Florida found that, while such grapes

would survive for some while, they eventually died or became totally

useless due to Pierce's Disease.

 Which doesn't mean there aren't any bunch grapes for Florida, only

that I don't have any. There are some developed from native florida

grapes, such as Lake Emerald, Stover, Conquistador, and others, that

can grow and survive there, and more are being bred. But if you live in

Florida and want to grow bunch grapes there, you'll have to look for a

source in the state.

 So if you live in Florida, buy my book, but don't buy my grapes.

Pinot Meunier and Samtrot

 If you have ever ordered Pinot Meunier and gotten something that

didn't seem right, read this.

   In 2006 a customer contacted me about some Pinot Meunier he had

purchased from me several years ago. Seems that a few of the plants

were different from the rest. Pinot Meunier has heavy fuzz on the

leaves that make them look gray-green. But some of this fellow's plants

had no fuzz and were shiny green.

 We eliminated the likelihood of a mixup in varieties, especially since

the shiney green type seemed nearly identical in every other respect.

To make a long story short, it turns out that Pinot Meunier is what's

known as a periclinal chimera. That just means that it has layers of

tissue that have different genetics from each other. Most of the time

the vine has the Meunier features. But sometimes shoots originate from

the other tissues and when that happens, the result is the shiney green

type. This is a naturally occurring condition that has been recorded

for several centuries.

 What makes it more interesting is that this happens often enough that

in some parts of Europe this other type is called "Samtrot". What is

MORE interesting is that Samtrot is very much like Pinot Noir, except

that it ripens about a week later than it.

 There's a lot more to this story, but the point here is that it is one

piece of evidence showing the close relationship between Pinot Noir and

Pinot Meunier.

Odd Numbers of Cuttings

  Had someone order 6 cuttings each of two varieties, for a total of

12, even though they said they wanted other varieties, but only had

room for 12 vines. And since there is a minimum of 5 cuttings of a

variety, they couldn't break it up into 3 of this, 4 of that, etc.

 This sort of thing happens a few times every season, and to those

people I say:

 First, the five cutting per variety minimum is at least partly for the

customer, since almost no one fails to root at least one cutting of a

minimum order, even someone who doesn't really follow the directions.

 Second, it's not cost effective for me to package single cuttings.

 But most of all, I have to ask "Don't you have any friends who

garden?" If you order more cuttings than you actually need, even with a

five cutting minimum, the extras can be potted up and make nice gifts

for gardening friends. And if you spread the vines around a little, all

the recipients can compare notes and share the fruit, if one grower

winds up with more than they want.

 Try it. You might make someone else quite happy to get a gift of a

grapevine.

 (And while I don't advertise it, you can get grape gift certificates,

too)

Try Them, You'll Like Them

  We usually think of fashion as something that applies to clothing or

cars, but fruit varieties go in and out of fashion too.

 On the variety list, there are literally dozens of grapes that are

very good, but sell very little because they are out of fashion, in one

way or another.

 Take Steuben. It has beautiful large berries and clusters, a mild,

fruity-spicey flavor, and very good overall disease resistance. In my

climate it also has the charm of brightly colored fall foliage. But

good as it is, it had the bad luck to be released in 1946, about the

time the first hybrid seedless grapes came out. Suddenly, seeded grapes

were no longer in fashion and Steuben flopped among home growers,

though it was taken up by a few commercial growers for juice.

 Then there is "Yates", a large berried red grape that ripens late

in

the season. Yates' most notable feature is that it will keep in cold

storage for several months, much longer than most American grapes, and

it resists rain damage. But few people want a grape that late any more,

and fewer still want to bother to store grapes.

 And there are many grapes that simply fail because something new comes

along and the growers figure that the new thing must be better, so they

stop trying to grow older varieties.

 The constant desire for something new is one of the reasons I quit

trying to keep up with many of the new grapes that have come along in

the last few years. I'd plant the new varieties and by the time the

vines came into full maturity in five years or so, interest had faded

and I found myself with grapes that no one wanted, or at least the

demand was so low it didn't pay to grow vines myself.

 Right now, I have several grapes for which there was a serious demand

a few years ago, but now that I've got good supplies for them, almost

no one is buying. The new seedless grapes from Arkansas, Jupiter and

Neptune, as well as the earlier Saturn, have nearly dropped off the

radar. Price, one of my personal favorites, hardly draws notice this

year.

 So rather than try to keep up with fashion, I only add a variety if I

personally like it, or if it shows it will have some real staying

power.

 There is more to this, but there's not enough room to cover it here.

For now, don't be afraid to try an old variety. Many are very decent.

They have just gone out of fashion.

How Late Can I Start Cuttings?

   While I've put the official cutoff date for selling cuttings at June

1, in the past, that doesn't HAVE to be the last day to get cuttings if

you want to do a little extra.

 The grape cuttings are stored in a cooler at temperatures of about 35

degrees F (1 C) and I know from experience that they will last over a

year that way, because I have vines started from cuttings that were 18

months old. Mind you, I don't sell cuttings that old, but it's a

measure of how well they will store.

 A customer who wanted to do an experiment bought a batch of cuttings

in August. They rooted and potted up the cuttings and let them grow

outside until the first frost. Then they put the pots in an unheated

building where they wouldn't freeze over the winter. They unpotted set

the vines out in the ground next spring. At the end of last season I

got a letter that those vines, which had been started quite late in the

previous summer from cuttings stored for ten months, had grown quite

well and most were trained up the posts, ready to have a little bit of

crop this year.

 So it seems that there is more flexibility in when cuttings can be

started, if you are willing to take some extra care of them. I won't

say I'd recommend the method for a beginner, but it is worth noting if

you want to be a little adventurous.

How My Cuttings Are Made

   "Field Run" is a term used by growers to refer to agricultural

products as they come from the field, before they are graded. Thus, a

bin of field run apples will contain everything that came off the trees

- big apples, small apples, misshapen fruits, etc. These go back to the

packing shed to be sorted into different grades and sizes.

 In this case, though, it refers to how I make grape cuttings. As part

of making sure (as much as I can) that the cuttings sent are always

true to name, I make most of my cuttings in the vineyard. That is, I

prune each vine and make the cuttings as I prune. That means that there

are cuttings from the biggest, heaviest canes on the vine, and the

smaller canes as well. As I prune, I can judge the health of the vine,

the character of the wood, and the amount of cuttings. This allows me

to figure in what size cuttings are going to be good from that vine,

but it also means that not everything is going to be a "standard" size.

 For example, Remaily Seedless has some of the heaviest canes of the

hybrid varieties, so most of the cuttings from it are large. At the

same time, the wood doesn't harden well towards the ends, so that part

of the cane is discarded. The result is that even the smallest diameter

cuttings are much larger than cuttings from other varieties with

thinner wood. Varieties like "Valiant" for instance, will produce,

solid, well ripened wood that may be as thin as a toothpick. Even at

that size, that thin wood is mature enough to produce a cutting that

will grow every bit as well as a thicker diameter cane.

 Then there are varieties like America that were bred in a hotter

climate, and simply don't produce thick wood in my cooler climate. It

is healthy and grows well, it just seems small to someone who has seen

the variety grow farther south.

 In short, while the size of cuttings in an order may vary, and some

may seem thin, all wood is evaluated on the spot in the vineyard and

included only if it's healthy. As added insurance, if some of the

cuttings in an order seem a little thin, count them. I often add extra

cuttings when some are thinner than usual.

For Grape Breeders

   If you have read my book, The Grape Grower, you know I have a soft

spot for breeding new grapes, to the extent of having a chapter on how

to do it yourself. In connection with that, I'm going to offer

something to anyone who wants to try a super-easy way to breed new

grapes.

 In my material I have collected a number of good female vines. That

is, while most grapes have perfect flowers and are self-pollinating,

there are grapes with flowers that have only functional female parts.

The anthers are there, but they curve down under the flower and don't

produce viable pollen. This is actually the normal condition in wild

species of grapes, vines are either male or female, but not perfect

flowered.

 Anyway, if growers were to plant a few of these female vines among

their other grapes, all the seed from those females would be a result

of pollination by whatever other vines were around. That means no hand

work would be needed to cross the two varieties. Just collect the fruit

of the female vines and save the seed. All the seedlings would be the

result of a cross between the female and the other varieties planted

near it. This is known as open pollination.

 The grower then has the option of planting the seed himself, or

leaving it for the birds to eat the fruit and spread seedlings around.

In grape breeding, the more seedlings that are grown, the greater the

chance is that one of them will have an outstanding combination of

traits from both parents. Find a really good one and you can propagate

it from cuttings and name it as a new variety.

 If this appeals to you, order "Breeders Special" from my website. No

extra charge. I'll pick out a variety that should give you a chance at

breeding something interesting.

 And as a bonus, most of the female varieties do have very good fruit,

they just have to have something else blooming at the same time to

pollinate them.

PLEASE Write It Down!

   Every so often I'll get an e-mail in which someone discusses an

order, listing the varieties they want and checking availability. That

by itself is fine. But then I get a check for an order, but no order in

with the money. Problem is, I don't save e-mails of grape inquiries,

since I have no guarantee I'll actually get an order. If I'm lucky, I

still have their e-mail address. If not, I have to mail the payment

back and let them know I can't fill the order without an order.

 So if you e-mail to discuss an order with me, please do us both a

favor and remember to include an actual order with your payment.

Replacements

   Dealing in a product like grape cuttings, where the customer has to

do the rooting, has created a problem I had not counted on when I

started: how to handle replacements.

   In all the years I've grown grapes, as long as I did it right

(like

the instructions on how to root grapes found on my website) I never had

a problem getting at least 75% of the cuttings to root. There were

exceptions, such as species or certain varieties containing those

species, that were harder to root than other grapes, but those are

rare.

  So when I get letters saying that "my grapes didn't root" it

usually

takes just a few minutes to discover that the person didn't follow

directions, or tried to shortcut something. This is why I'm reluctant

to offer a specific replacement policy, because I have no control over

how the cuttings are handled after they leave me.

   One year I did discover that one batch of one variety, which had

come

from another grower, had been mishandled by him and were not rooting

well for anyone. Everyone who had gotten grapes from that batch was

contacted and offered replacements.

   So far as I know, this sort of cutting failure has never happened

any

other time.

   And more than once, I've set plastic storage tubs full of cuttings

out of the cooler and let them sit in the basement at about 60 degrees

F for four months or more before until I got around to dumping them.

It's amazing how many times I've opened the tubs to find bundles of

cuttings covered with roots and shoots. And those are cuttings that are

often in storage six to eight months before they are taken out of the

cooler.

   The point is, it's so easy to root grape cuttings most of the

time,

IF THE PERSON SIMPLY FOLLOWS DIRECTIONS, that there has to be some kind

of tangible evidence that the failure was due to something that

happened before the customer gets the cuttings.

   That may sound hardnose, but as a one-man business, I've yet to

come

up with anything more practical.

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