very old grape vines

In my town of Brevard NC we have opened a small museum in an 1881 house. The house had been moved to the back of a long lot where apparently no cultivation went on except 2 grape vines along the fence. Last year, my husband cut them back and I fertilized them. They now have a lot of baby grape clusters. But I don't know anything about what to fertilize them with or how to trim back later so they will produce more the next year.
Do you trim them back as soon as they are finished bearing or wait until they are dormant?
Also what ph do they like? Soil is very acid here.

woodspirit;

If those vines are growing well and are healthy then the ph of your soil is probably fine. Most varieties do well with a slightly acidic ph level. I am growing the concord variety with a 6.0 ph level and they do fine. As far as pruning, I'd wait till the dead of winter. I know the seasons are a bit different down there in NC and spring arrives earlier than here so maybe late December or January. I do mine in Late February early march. At any rate you should prune them before they break dormancy.

Dave

We're up in the mountains so I suspect we're not much warmer than you. I read up a little on how to prune them and since these are so overgrown, I will have to do that seriously.
But right now, they have grape clusters and I need to know if they need some fertilizing at this point?

You may want to look in:
bunch grapes - http://www.ces.ncsu.edu/depts/hort/hil/hil-8202.html

or

muscadines - http://www.ces.ncsu.edu/depts/hort/hil/hil-8203.html

I presume they are bunch grapes - muscadines are the ones that grow wild all over the South.

I envy you for your good luck in having well established vines.

Paul

These have a lot of small green bunches now. I believe they are concords.

pbyrley, that was a very very good article. My vine is probably 75 years old so I will just fertilize once more this year and then trim back in the winter......Thanks, so much

If you start having a lot of rain, you may need fungicide to keep the grapes from rotting. The only one I have found avail at HD is called Boniva fruit tree spray - it has Captan fungicide in it. I need to ask the NC State people what fungicide is better for me (altho too much rain is the least of our worries right now).

I'm sure you will enjoy eating fruit from your obviously hardy grape vine. My young seedless red bunch grape vine has seven bunches on it. It's for my wife as she doesn't like seeds. I am moving into muscadines which I like much more, and grew up in Augusta GA spitting wild muscadine seeds every summer.

Paul

what a mental picture you paint, Paul, lol. The vines look good now and so do the bunches. My biggest problem is that during the neglect over many years, other vines came up, including briars (which a friend of mine calls Cat's Claws) and wild potato vine.
For the most part, I can't use Round-up so I keep pulling stuff up or cutting them off. These 2 are hard to get rid of. Most can't be pulled up.