How to Grow Grapes In Florida
Sounds idyllic, but while figs are not hard to grow in Florida, it takes a bit more planning and work to grow grapes in a Florida-type climate. It CAN be done, though you’d better do your homework before you plant or you will be in for disappointment and lots of work. Over the following many columns I’ll cover the fundamentals of what you’ll have to address and what you can grow, depending on how much work you would like to put into your grapes.
The 1st gigantic hindrance to growing grapes in Florida, or any warm, damp part of the U.S, is illness.
The southeastern U.S. Is where all the major fungal illnesses of grapes originated, including black rot, downy mould, powdery mould, anthracnose, several types of blights and fruit rots, and more. Those diseases are bad enough in the summers of northerly areas, for example Manhattan, but in the hot, wet climate of the southeast, they start earlier, reproduce quicker, and have many more months to do their work. Even so, these diseases only stunt and damage vines and destroy the crop, and then only if untreated. Much more major is the bacterial pest Pierce’s disease, which can kill vines altogether.
Pierce’s disease ( PD for short ) is a bacterial illness. Rather than attacking the exterior of the vine, the way the fungal sicknesses do, it becomes into the vine where it reproduces at a rate that clogs the vascular system of the vine, making it wilt and die, sometimes within a few days. Severely influenced vines will look as if they were hit with a blowtorch, while vines with resistance may not even show any apparent symptoms. between are such things as slowed expansion of the vine, scorching of the leaf margins, and death of some shoots. The important factor in PD is that, while the fungal diseases spread by themselves, PD must be spread by a carrier, sometimes sucking insects like leafhoppers. This gives one of the means to stop the growth of PD, by stopping the leafhoppers that carry it. Not a straightforward task in a climate where the leafhoppers can have 3 or more generations a season, each larger than the last.
These pests are the main reason that thoughtless home growers who buy vines of table grape varieties like Flame Seedless or wine grapes like Chardonnay and other kinds of the old world grape Vitis vinifera shortly find they made a serious mistake. Plant Vitis vinifera outdoors without a lot of bug control and it’s going to be a rare vine that survives its first year. In this example, a lot can suggest spray or other illness control applied as much as 3 times per week.
Yankee grapes like Concord or other northern-bred grapes having a modicum of illness resistance may survive a little longer, but they can succumb ultimately, too, without a large amount of work controlling illness.
With these kinds of nasties to handle, it may seem like growing grapes in Florida may be more work than it’s worth. But take heart, there are lots of ways to get grapes WITHOUT spending all your waking hours on pest control.
