Spring planting of grapes in open ground will not cause much trouble to the gardener, if you correctly determine the time and place, and also do not forget about the preparatory procedures. The presence of four main landing options allows you to organize your site in the most successful way.
Advantages and disadvantages
Planting grapes in the spring in open ground has both advantages and disadvantages.
Let’s look at the positives.
- A significant plus is the time that the seedling gets to take root in a new place and get stronger before the onset of cold weather. By winter, its root system will develop so much that it will be able not only to provide nutrition to the bush, but also to produce a crop next season. By the way, grapes planted in autumn are able to bear fruit with a delay of at least a year.
- The place for the vineyard can be prepared in advance, after which the soil has time to rest and nourish itself with useful substances.
- Also, by transferring the crop to a permanent habitat in the spring months, in most cases it is possible to avoid a sharp cold snap, and therefore the seedling does not die from the cold after planting.
Comfortable weather conditions accelerate the process of adaptation, the culture increases resistance to low temperatures.
However, the procedure still has a number of disadvantages.
- For example, spring warming is usually accompanied by the activation of pests and the development of fungal and infectious diseases. Without preventive tillage, a bush that has not yet grown stronger can become infected, not take root, or even die.
- There is little possibility of night frosts returning, as well as insufficient soil moisture after snowmelt. In a situation of lack of moisture, accompanied by an increase in temperatures, the grapes will have to be watered from the very beginning of the season.
- Another relative disadvantage is that very few varieties of grapes are sold in the spring – you have to buy seedlings in the fall and organize appropriate storage for them, or take risks by acquiring diseased or frozen specimens.
Terms and place
The timing of the spring planting of seedlings in open ground may vary slightly, depending on the specifics of the seedlings and the climatic features of the region. So, from the second half of April until the middle of the next month, it is customary to deal with lignified annuals, and from the end of spring and almost until the end of June, with green vegetative ones. In any case, it is important to wait for the complete thawing of the earth and the establishment of an average daily temperature equal to plus 12-15 degrees.
In the southern regions of Russia, for example, in the Crimea or the Kuban, the landing period starts from the second decade of April. An important condition is that the air is already warming up to +15 degrees, and well-lit areas of the earth – so generally up to +20 degrees. Despite the warm weather, at night the seedlings are still covered with special material in case of frost. It is customary to plant grapes in the Moscow region and in the middle lane in May, starting from the second decade. By this time, the soil should already be well moistened, and the air should warm up to plus 15-17 degrees. On the territory of Belarus, this period begins after May 9.
For the Urals and Siberia, it is typical to plant a crop in open ground from the end of May to mid-June. It should be mentioned that many gardeners living in these regions prefer to design a green protective screen for the vineyard. A structure with a height of 80 to 100 centimeters is assembled from boards and mounted on the north side of the beds. Its main purpose is to protect landings from cold winds.
In general, if you plan to plant just a few grape bushes, then it is best to place them along the south side of the fence or near the south wall of the house. The formation of several rows will require organizing them on the gentle southern slope of the site, maintaining the orientation from north to south. The area should be well lit, but at the same time be protected from drafts. In principle, to cope with the winds, you can place a nearby hedge of trees with a tap root system. The dimensions of the beds should allow you to maintain a gap of 3 to 6 meters between seedlings and large trees.
Otherwise, the neighbors will pull all the nutrients out of the soil, and the plants will not have room to grow.
If the vineyard turns out to be broken in the south or west sides of large buildings, then the heat accumulated by the buildings during the day will be given to the plants at night. In no case should you plant seedlings in the lowlands, the temperature drops of which the bushes will not survive, as well as in areas with a close location of groundwater.
Prepare
The more carefully the preparation of planting pits, material, the greater the likelihood of successful adaptation of grapes in a new place.
Seats
Prepare a place for spring planting of grapes should be the previous autumn. So, a good solution would be to sow winter rye – this crop will improve the condition of the soil, and in the spring, being left in the aisles, it will protect the seedlings from the wind, and the sandy layer from scattering. When the grape bushes get stronger, mowed rye can be used as mulch.
The culture suits any soil, with the exception of dense clay, however, it reacts very poorly to pH levels below 5 units. Too acidic earth is necessarily subjected to liming.
If it was decided to feed the soil with organic matter before planting, then only fermented and rotted substances, for example, mullein, chicken manure, humus or compost, are allowed to be used. Stimulate the root system will allow the addition of 100-300 grams of superphosphate, laid at the bottom of the hole. In addition, it is worth adding a couple of kilograms of wood ash to the recess. The depth of the pit, as well as its width, averages 80 centimeters. It is important that the roots of grape seedlings find themselves at a depth, as they can withstand temperatures no more than minus 6-7 degrees.
Saplings
Seedlings transferred to open ground must be healthy and well developed. In horticulture, it is customary to use two varieties: vegetative or lignified. The first, in fact, is a cutting with several green leaves, which is sent to the open ground in early spring.
Green vegetative seedlings need hardening before planting. Otherwise, once in the open ground, they will immediately burn out in the sun. Hardening begins with keeping seedlings under a canopy or under wide crowns of trees for almost a week, and then continues in the form of exposure to the open sun for about 8-10 days.
It will not be superfluous to withstand the blanks in a growth stimulator – purchased or home-made, made from a tablespoon of honey and a liter of water.
Under lignified seedlings is meant a one-year-old bush, dug out in the fall. Before planting, the plant will need to cut off a one-year-old shoot, leaving 3-4 eyes. The roots on all the upper nodes are removed, and on the lower ones they are only refreshed. However, for seedlings grown from shortened cuttings, only a refreshing pruning of the upper root processes is required. In order to prevent the development of fungal diseases, it makes sense to immerse the growth without a root in a mixture of 5 grams of “Dnok” and 1 liter of water. It also makes sense to soak the cut seedling for about an hour in a bucket of water.
It is worth mentioning that in the spring, grapes can also be planted with seeds for seedlings.
Stratified for 2-4 months, disinfected and germinated on a wet napkin, the material in the southern regions is already sent to open ground in mid-March. If at first the grains are planned to be placed indoors – in a pot on a windowsill or greenhouse, then the sowing time varies from early March to the first decade of May.
Landing technology
In order to successfully germinate a vine, the beginner gardener must figure out which planting technique will be right for his particular conditions.
classical
A step-by-step instruction that allows you to plant grapes according to the classical scheme looks quite simple. The seedling is released from the container and, together with the earthy clod, is placed at the bottom of the hole. On the north side of the recess, a peg is immediately dug in, which will later be required for tying. The seedling is sprinkled with earth on top of the lump, which is immediately compacted and irrigated with warm water. After that, the pit is filled to a height corresponding to the first leaflet.
On the trellis
This method requires the preliminary installation of trellises, the number of which corresponds to the number of seedlings. It is most convenient to construct these supports from metal tubes with a diameter of about 10 centimeters, on which the vine will be fixed with wire wrapped in plastic protection. The diameter of the metal rod is usually chosen to be 5 centimeters. The culture should be planted in the same way as with a classic planting. Her scheme, as a rule, looks like 3 by 3 meters.
In the beds
The organization of beds is especially popular in the northern regions of Russia, since such a system does not allow flooding and provides the grapes with the maximum amount of heat. It all starts with the formation of a trench going south. Its depth reaches 35-40 centimeters, length – 10 meters, and width – 1 meter. At the next stage, the soil is poured out above 32-35 centimeters from the surface. After mulching and placing the insulation, the seedlings themselves are planted. Watering such a bed is carried out using a special tube.
Moldavian
The specificity of the Moldovan planting requires twisting a long piece of a healthy mature vine, for example, taken from a two-year-old grape. The blank, tied with a dense rope, is located in a regular hole in such a way that only 2-3 kidneys remain above the surface. In the future, everything happens similarly to the classical scheme.
