What To Do With a Grape Vine in June – 5 Tasks for the Finest, Sweetest Fruits
Guarantee good-sized, healthy bunches of grapes to harvest with this monthly care guide
Grape vines may conjure images of sprawling vineyards, but they can be grown in smaller spaces by encouraging them vertically up a wall or fence. June is a crucial month for the development of fruits, and a few key tasks help you get the best harvest in late summer or early fall.
This month is an opportune time to prune stems and thin fruits to help the grapes ripen. Also, regular watering and a June feed will help those currently small fruits develop into larger ones for picking. And you will need to protect your crop from pests this month if you grow grapes outdoors.
An important aspect of understanding how to grow grapes is adopting the right seasonal care. True, caring for grapes does need patience and attention, but this is more than worth it when you harvest the bunches. I have maintained and cropped vines in greenhouses over the years, and here are five tasks I believe may stand between a satisfying and a disappointing harvest.
1. Give Vines a Summer Prune
Knowing when to prune grape vines is crucial. The major pruning takes place in winter, when the vines are dormant, but there are benefits from giving them a light summer prune, too.
Cutting back shoots in early summer thins weak or crowded shoots and removes excess foliage, improving air circulation and sun exposure. These are essential factors in successfully ripening the fruits and preventing fungal diseases, including powdery mildew.
As for how to prune grape vines this month, use a pair of clean, sharp pruning tools to cut back shoots to two sets of leaves past a developing bunch of grapes. You can also nip out leaves growing around the fruit, so that sunlight can reach the grapes.
Prune out any stems that aren’t carrying fruit to ensure the plant doesn’t waste energy, unless you are keeping them to develop the future framework of the vine.
An additional summer trimming task is to scour the trunk and remove any suckers or shoots that appear. Again, this prevents the vine from wasting energy on developing unwanted growth.
2. Thin the Fruits so the Rest Can Swell
Once the vine has started producing berries, it is an opportune time to thin the fruits. Often, a vine starts developing more fruit than it can sustain all the way through to harvest.
If you leave all the fruits, you’ll get lots of small, disappointing, inedible grapes. It may seem counterintuitive, but removing fruits gives you a better crop, as the remaining ones will swell further and ripen fully.
An easy method to adopt is to thin the developing clusters, leaving only one or two per shoot. The remaining bunches will swell, and you’ll have bigger and better grapes to pick.
Also, removing excess clusters also improves air circulation and sunlight (like when removing foliage) to keep the vines healthy.
Some growers will also hand-thin berries to remove one in three grapes. This technique will help you get bigger grapes, but it can be very tricky, and is not completely necessary for home gardeners.
A useful tool for thinning clusters of developing grapes can be a pair of garden snips. A product like these Fiskars pruning snips, available at Amazon, has sharp, straight micro-tip blades to get into smaller gaps when precision is needed.
3. Tie in New Shoots so the Vine Is Supported
Grapes are vigorous climbers that need to be trained. This can be to a fence, wall, or trellis, or the plants can be grown up a pergola or arbor.
Wherever you grow grapes, June is a great time to check all the stems and ensure that the shoots are trained and tied in. They must remain supported as the bunches develop to avoid losing grapes as stems snap or are damaged during the summer.
The best plant ties are soft and won’t damage the stems as they grow. Twine is a common material, or you can use reusable soft ties, or flexi-ties. These Velcro garden ties, available at Walmart, are great options as they are soft, non-slip, and reusable.
4. Water and Feed Vines to Support Developing Grapes
How much you need to water a grape vine in June will depend on where it is growing. Vines with their roots growing indoors, such as in a greenhouse, may need more watering than those outdoors.
Grape vines like consistent moisture. During dry periods, which can occur in early summer, keep a close eye on the soil’s moisture levels and water vines deeply if needed – a soil moisture meter, available at Amazon, offers a quick and easy way to check.
It is an important time to be diligent with watering, as drought stress can affect the fruiting or even cause the vines to drop fruit in extreme circumstances. The best approach is to water deeply and soak the base of the vine, rather than the foliage, so the moisture gets to the roots.
Once the grapes start to swell, feed the vines with a high-potassium liquid feed to help them develop healthily. An ideal product for this is a liquid tomato feed, such as this tomato booster fertilizer at Amazon.
Mix the liquid concentrate in a watering can and apply it when you water plants. A weekly or fortnightly feed is beneficial until the grapes start to ripen, usually indicated by the color changing.
5. Protect Fruits From Pests
Developing fruits are at risk in early summer. You may be looking at them and imagining the harvests to come, but birds and wasps are also likely eyeing up your fruits. June is a good time to protect your pickings.
To protect fruits in your yard, you can cover the entire vine in garden netting. For a physical barrier, fine netting (you can get 8 x 20 feet garden netting at Walmart) can be draped over the vines.
This needs to be secured to the ground with landscape staples (you can get a 50-pack of landscape staples at Ace Hardware) or heavy weights, to prevent birds from sneaking in and getting stuck.
Rather than covering an entire vine, individual bunches of grapes can be covered with mesh bags. Using fine mesh or organza mesh bags to protect crops works perfectly. It allows light, air, and water through, but stops pests from getting to the fruits. You can get 100 fruit protection bags at Amazon to use on various fruits.
Alternatively, decoys and deterrents can be placed around the vines to deter birds. Hanging old CDs, DVDs, or balls of aluminum foil can deter pests as they catch and reflect the light to startle birds. Or you can use decoys like scarecrows, owls, or flying hawk kites.
What to Shop
'Concord' is a self-pollinating and disease-resistant grape vine that produces sweet, blue-black grapes in late summer and early fall.
These owl statues have rotating heads on a spring - they move with the wind and appear more life-like. Moving locations every two weeks is advisable to scare birds effectively.
A soaker hose is a great way to water efficiently. It slowly seeps water into the ground around the base of your plants. This soaker hose is 15-feet long and is covered in a clog-resistant fabric.
June is a significant month for many different fruits, not just grapes. That includes if you are growing raspberries. In early summer, those with early varieties of summer-fruiting raspberries can start to enjoy picking the sweet fruits.
Aside from harvesting, raspberry plants in June need watering to plump up the fruits, feeding to encourage ripening, and weeding, so the canes get all the water and nutrients available in the soil.
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