Moving Grape Vines (cross posted in vine forum)

I posted this in the vine forum but am posting here also since it's about fruits!

My house is for sale and we have moved to another house. I have 6 grape vines in the yard that I would like to move to the new place. At the moment, they are absolutely COVERED in clusters. The clusters are very small - the fruits are about the size of a very small peppercorn right now. Maybe half a peppercorn. I don't want to lose all the fruits. Should I move them now, or should I wait until the house sells (who knows how long that will be in this market) and move them then. Will I lose more fruits moving them now or later? They are mostly table grapes. Niagara, Concord, etc. This was the first year that they were all going to fruit, except 1 vine, which had two bunches last year. Small bunches. I am so excited about all my grapes for this year, and don't want to lose them all...I think I have about 50-100 bunches per vine right now. I can imagine all the jelly!

In either case, does anyone have advice on the actual best way to move them. My thoughts are, dig the holes for them at the new place and amend soil, so that everything is prepared for them. Then, dig them up getting as much root as possible and a very large ball of soil around them. Wrap in a tarp for each one, and then transport it. It's about a half hour drive. Plant immediately and water well.

Any advice highly appreciated!
Claire

Second question in this University of Missouri Extension link answers your question.
http://extension.missouri.edu/xplor/qa/horticulture0004.htm
But if you absolutely need to take the plants with you, wait until the vines are dormant and take cuttings. You are going to lose the grape clusters if you move them now. You might even lose the vines as well. It will be inpossible to take up the entire root system so you will have to remove a large part of the top growth.

Taking cuttings sounds like a better idea. If you take several of each variety, you insure that you end up with at least one vine of each variety. If you move them now, you might end up with nothing. Another thing to consider is by taking cuttings and leaving the original grapevines with the property might be a good selling point. My DH and I looked at property in the fall. Seeing fruit trees and grapevines in the landscape certainly made a property more appealing. Untimately, my DH decided to commute.

Thanks for that link. That's a bit disappointing. I think I still have to try it. Sadly, the garden is one of the downsides to that home. I love it and think it's fabulous, but people who have viewed the house say the yard is "too busy" and "too much work" and "too many plants." My realtor is encouraging me to get stuff out of there. Every other house on the street has a plain lawn backyard with a swingset in it. We don't have kids, which is one reason we moved from that neighborhood, because we didn't fit in. Everybody has a few sedum "Autumn Joy" out front, a few tulips in the spring, the occasional shrub, but no gardens to speak of. I thought it would be a selling point, but apparently we gardeners are few and far between!

A couple of other web sources I have now found say that if you want to move them, try to wait until they go dormant and then do it. Mine got planted the fall of 2006, so they haven't been in the ground that long. Their main stem is about 1 to 1.5 inch diameter. I think I will let them sit until the house sells and then do my best.

I can associate with a yard being too busy. We sold our house of 22 years back in 2004. I had landscaped it with edibles as much as possible. I had all kinds of fruit and nut trees and a few grapevines. With the exception of the pecan tree, all the other trees were dwarf or semi-dwarf. We had fruit all summer and well into the fall. The couple that bought the house removed 22 years of work because they wanted something easy to care for. I was heartbroken.

Oh Bettydee - that is just tragic. Why would anybody undo all that wonderful work?! I can imagine how crushed you were. I know I would be. I don't care what they do inside the house, but just keep the garden going!! This is one of the main reasons I'm trying to move as many plants as possible. I dread the thought of someone ripping them all out and putting in the bane of true gardeners.....fresh sod. Groan. I've moved a ton of perennials, irises, clematis vines, currant bushes, gooseberries, jostaberries, raspberries. I've still got more clematis to move, the grapevines, more raspberries, and some of my ornamental grasses. My realtor said I should probably take out the raised beds too. Well fine, I'll just move them over here! It's a lot of work though.

Your poor back!

My back does complain a little (well, sometimes a lot), but I enjoy a day's work in the garden better than my usual day's work in the office!

I didn't have success moving grape vines. I waited till Jan. pruned the top growth off and dug up a good size part of the roots. The roots run all over the place so you'll never get them out of the ground. I didn't think that was a problem but what I tried to transplant died. Cutting are the best root to go. Mine were 5 or 6 years old BTW.

CoreHHI - that's unfortunate to hear. I guess January in zone 9a is probably similar to September here. Maybe since mine are only 2 years old they will have less roots? I don't know. I bought them from our local arboretum when they have their annual sale. I think I will buy some more this fall in case the transplanting doesn't work. I've never even tasted the grapes from any of the vines except 1, so I don't have "favorites" so to speak. I just wanted to move them because they are nicely established now. Well, I will give it my best shot. I shall try to remember to let you all know how it works out for them and if they survive. If they do, I will detail the method for anyone else who might want to move grapevines in future.
Claire

It was an experiment. I grew a bunch of vines from seed and had to many so I was giving them to a neighbor who wanted them. The whole idea was they were of fruiting age. I don't know if you take a cutting from fruiting age vine, if the vine you root will fruit that year or the next. I feel another experimant coming up now that I said that.

Update: The house sold. They want to close on July 18. So, on Sunday morning, we moved the first two grapevines. Each has at least 40 bunches of grapes. Right now they are the size of small marbles. Today we moved another one. There are five left to go. We dug them and got as many roots as we could, and kept them as long as we could. Sometimes they went under the fence and we had to break them. We immediately put them into tubs of soil, covered all roots, and watered heavily. We put them into the pickup and drove them to the new place. We planted them immediately (so total time out of ground about 45 minutes to an hour) and watered again heavily.

This evening, the two that we planted yesterday morning look fabulous. They had a little bit of wilting on a couple of the tips of growth, but not all tips. Some of the tendrils have already twined around the wire fence that they are placed upon now. There is no sign of wilting of the mature leaves. They are green and very firm and normal looking. The one we planted tonight we have treated the same way.

For anyone considering doing this, the vines I have moved have trunks about the circumference of my thumb, or maybe a little more. They have numerous side branches. They were planted the fall before last. I think they are going to make it just fine, and I think I might even get fruit from them. I will post another update in a week or so to let you know how they are doing. I will also post some pictures. I think a big part of it is the speed of digging and getting them back in the ground, so that they spend the least time out of the soil with drying roots. I also think having holes prepared is helpful, and getting as much root as possible.

Claire

Claire, I would not celebrate yet. I had many "victories" with moving plants which evolved into painful defeats over the next few weeks. I would also pull off all that fruit to ease the load on the plant.

Scott

How do your grapes look now?
RED

Actually Red, most of them are doing fabulously. I actually had 9 vines to move, not 6 as I first thought. We moved all 9 of them and 1 of them died pretty fast. Of the remaining 8, six of them are in excellent condition. Green leaves, full grapes, no wrinkling, no dead bits. They are real troopers! The other 2 vines had sections die back a bit, but have other sections that remain green. Their grape bunches went wrinkly so I cut most of them off.

I also bought 2 new grape vines - a Himrod and an Edelweiss.

It's been about a month now since the move, so I am quite pleased with how it went, and I hope that at least the 6 who are in top shape will make it, and the other 2 might need a year to recover but hopefully they'll make it too. And, it looks like I will have a few grapes ripen after all. Quite unexpected!

Claire

Sounds like you did a great job caring for them
RED

Update on how it all worked out with my grapes, in case anyone reads this thread and is curious...

I cut about half the fruit off each plant at moving, and the couple of vines that seemed to suffer more, I cut off all the fruit within the first couple of weeks. The rest ripened beautifully, there are lots of new shoots on the vines, and just yesterday I made 8 cups of grape jelly with the fruit. The bowl in the picture was filled twice. If all the fruit had made it, it would've been 4 times. I can't wait for next year!!

While I don't recommend moving grape vines if not absolutely necessary, it can be done with considerable effort, heavy watering, and out of the ground/back into the ground as quickly as possible, with good root coverage of soil while moving. I also recommend the use of quick start or another product similar to that, in order to get the roots going.

Claire

Claire, thanks for letting us know how it turned out and congratulations!

Scott

Thanks Scott - I think another factor was that my vines had only been in place for a couple of years at the other house, so were not as deeply established as they could have been. I'm not at all sure that 10 or 15 year old vines could be moved successfully this way.

Claire