The Cordon or Wall System of Growing Grapes
The aim here is to produce a vine shaped like an open bush. The rods are allowed to grow naturally for the first year after planting. The rods are then cut back to within two buds of their base in January.
The stakes can conveniently be 12 feet apart and a wire should run right the way along the top. I have used surplus telephone wire with success. Incidentally, another wire must be stretched a foot from ground level.
The leaves of the vines grown against walls are often attacked by Red Spiders, and the answer here is to syringe the under surface of the foliage in the evening, twice a week, from the beginning of June onwards. In cases of bad attack some liquid derris should be added to the water.
Red Spiders can be detected by examining the back of the leaf with a magnifying glass. Red Spider is a bad name. Yellow Mite would be better.
Some people give each vine one stake, 4 feet out of the ground, and then, instead of tying the rods out to ‘form a goblet, they merely tie the tips of the rods to the top of the stakes to form an inverted cone. By the way, do not allow the young cane to go on growing after the requisite number of bunches of grapes have been produced. You should always pinch out the growing point at 3 leaves beyond the top hunch.
Those who don’t believe in straw mulching may like to know that the prunings and foliage of healthy vines may be roto-tilled shallowly into the soil, in November, and so help to keep up the humus content. By rotary hoeing you smash up the prunings which then soon decompose.
