Tree fruit
Table grape
Vitis vinifera
Timings for your region
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Never sown — container-grown plants go straight into the bed.
The harvest times are for an established plant — the first crop comes after 2–3 years.
Plantingearly April – late May
Harvestearly September – mid October
Practical tip
Take a mildew-resistant variety — ‘Muscat bleu’, ‘Palatina’, ‘Lakemont’. Without resistance the summer turns into a spraying programme, which is something this site neither may nor wants to advise on. Plant in spring: a young vine put in in November takes winter damage.
Origin & history
The grape vine was taken into cultivation about 8000 years ago in the South Caucasus, and it has stood on the Rhine, Mosel and Danube ever since the Romans carried it north. Table grapes and wine grapes are the same species, selected in two directions: large berries, thin skins and low acidity on one side, sugar and aroma on the other. The turning point came around 1870 with phylloxera, brought in from North America — since then practically every European vine grows on an American rootstock. That a vine now works in an ordinary garden without any winemaking knowledge is down to the breeding of mildew-resistant varieties since the 1970s.
Varieties
Two questions decide it before you buy: ripening time and pips. “Muscat bleu” is the toughest of the blue ones, ripens from early September and tastes strongly of muscat, but has pips. “Nero” is blue as well, seedless and similarly early; “Palatina” is yellow, muscat-scented and early enough for a cool site. “Lakemont” is seedless and greenish yellow but wants the warmest wall you have, or it will not finish by late October. Seedless varieties carry smaller berries by nature. Buy a grafted plant in a container rather than a rooted cutting — on its own roots a vine is defenceless against phylloxera.
Care
Train it as a cordon: a single stem to a good 80 cm, then one or two horizontal arms along a wire, with the fruiting wood running vertically upwards from them. Prune in January or February, cutting last year’s shoots back to one or two buds — cut in March and the vine bleeds from every wound for weeks. In summer you stop each shoot four to five leaves beyond the last bunch, rub out the side shoots, and from mid-August take off the leaves directly in front of the bunches. The foot of a south wall is the driest spot in the garden: water deeply for the first two years, cover the graft union with leaves over winter, and feed with compost in spring, nothing else.
What can go wrong
The two mildews are the real subject: powdery mildew lays a floury coating over leaves and berries, downy mildew shows oily patches on the upper leaf surface and a grey felt beneath. Culturally, everything that lets the foliage dry off quickly helps — an open framework, rubbing out side shoots, water at the base rather than over the leaves, and clearing fallen leaves and shrivelled berries in winter. With a susceptible variety that is not enough, and this site has nothing further to say on the matter. From late August wasps and birds arrive: organza bags over individual bunches work better than a net over the whole vine, and damaged berries come off at once.
Harvest, storage & kitchen
Grapes do not ripen further once cut; the sugar only rises on the vine. Blue varieties colour up two or three weeks before they are sweet, so taste a berry from the middle of the bunch instead of going by colour. Cut the whole bunch with secateurs and hold it by the stalk, or you wipe off the blue-grey bloom and the berries soften faster. In an open bag they keep a good week in the fridge, hung somewhere cool a little longer. Beyond eating them fresh: juice, jelly with preserving sugar, grapes roasted on a tray under onions and bacon, and the young May leaves blanched and stuffed.
All timings are guide values for the given climate, not a guarantee. Weather, aspect and variety all have a say.