North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

[lonrom@hevanet.com]

You found some secondary clusters.   They occur naturally on grapes.  Some 
varieties and 
species are more prone to them than others. Wild Vitis sylvestris (the  
ancestor of V.
vinifera)  
grapes can put out a fairly large crop of secondaries.  It probably is a 
survival
mechanism as 
it means that some of the fruit ripens later and wouldn't be eaten by the 
same creatures
that 
get the main crop, so the seeds would be spread in different ways.
Point is, don't worry about them.  They actually mean your vine has good 
conditions and 
good vigor that it's able to do that.
-Lon Rombough

> A couple of weeks ago, I was cutting off the bird netting from my 
> Concord grapes (I really need to investigate disposable netting next 
> year, since there's no way I can remove it in one piece), when I found a 
> half-dozen small bunches of grapes - long, long after the main crop had 
> ripened. These were smaller than normal - the grapes and the bunches - 
> but still delicious. I had more late grapes than this, but the birds got 
> some of them (those that were poking through the netting), and I picked 
> some of the others too early (as sour as little lemons!). They were all 
> growing from this year's canes.
> 
> But my question is this: Was this an indication that I'd actually pruned 
> TOO severely last spring? Or just one of those things that Concord 
> grapes do?
> 
> I had a ton of grapes this year, and I'd actually wondered if I hadn't 
> pruned enough. But these Concord grapes are so incredibly vigorous that 
> I'm now wondering if I should have left even more when I pruned them. 
> Note that they were hit hard by our April freeze, too - they looked 
> terrible after that - but they still grew like crazy and produced a LOT 
> of grapes.
> 
> Just wondering. I have to admit that it was nice to get a few late 
> grapes, but there weren't enough of them to make all that much 
> difference. Still, it appears that I can't be doing TOO badly (or, more 
> likely, that they're just so easy to grow that it's almost impossible to 
> screw things up).
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> Bill
> Lincoln, NE (zone 5)
> 
> -- 
> He is not only dull himself, he is the cause of dullness in others. - 
> Samuel Johnson
> 
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