Replants

I’m pulling from Merrill’s post in the general 2016 West Coast thread in hopes of getting a few more reactions on this topic –
“What I can’t understand is why I can’t do replants successfully. Own rooted or my own grafted onto established rootstock - nothing. My plug-ins simply don’t thrive, using one method or another. If I replant a small block - say, 10 vines, then yes. But plug-ins here and there? Nope.”

I’ve also come to the conclusion that there is little point in doing replants after the first or (maybe) second year after the main planting. After that, I’ve found that the root systems of the more established vines prevent the replants from really getting established. I’ve spent a lot of time out there with a “nurse wagon” doing supplemental watering of the replants, and even 10 years later, they’re still puny and barely productive. The only time I might try replants is if I graft a section. The extra watering and knocking back the established vines might give the replants a fighting chance. Anybody else have better luck?

Try the Duarte Ubers. I’ve had great luck with them. Twice the price though. [cry.gif]

Can’t see why your grafts wouldn’t work. Could be your timing/watering etc.

I’m very surprised as replanting is the name of the game for many in the east. I know a local vineyard who told me that he replants 10% of his chardonnay every year…yikes!

Our initial planting, and subsequent replants, are with tall grafted(uber) plants only. They take off pretty quickly such that you can get a light crop the first year as there is no trunk training. I also like the fact that you do not need the protective milk cartons and there is essentially no suckering work.

Grafting isn’t a problem. I only meant that when grafting over established vines, replants might stand a better chance within that block because it gets watered more frequently.
I hadn’t tried the Ubers, but your results sound promising. I have tried repotting regular nursery stock into 3 gal containers for a year before moving them out to the field. I had hoped that might help them hit the ground running, but those aren’t all that productive years later.

Anecdotal and not related to your replants question, but in my domestic gardening experience, bigger more established plants rarely do as well when transplanted as younger (arguably resilient) plants. I seek out the youngest plants possible and put them in the soil as early as they can manage.

Ubers? Are these vines that operate as independent contractors? :slight_smile:

How are these different from other potted vines?

Rama: one issue I’ve seen with a lot of bigger plants purchased at nurseries is they’re often root bound in their pots. Even if you loosen up the root ball, getting moisture into the root zone once in the ground can be a problem. I’m assuming the Uber folks avoid this problem (not that there aren’t other gotchas).

Tall grafted plants are exactly that. Our plants come in around 32 inches without root length counted and the scion is still 2-3 inches. This will give you an idea on size … EnoViti: Fall Update on Tall Grafts at Mercier . Depending on the nursery operation the tall grafts can be potted for the first year or some, with the right machinery, are doing field planting. Either way in our case they are shipped in the Spring as dormant bare root plants. Very much like fruit tree whips. Germany is now at ~40-50% tall grafts, aka hochstammreben, in their nurseries which do supply all over Europe. We have friends in the UK that have and are planting >200 acres with tall vines exclusively. US and NZ have a healthy business in tall grafts as well which does seem to be growing. As with anything there are advantages and disadvantages depending on where and why you are planting them.

With some types of root bound plants, after loosening them up as much as possible, the advice is to make some cuts, where new root growth will emerge from.

Some plants acclimate to a soil type and have difficulty penetrating a harder soil - even though they would’ve had no problem if started in that harder soil - so the roots just turn back and become root bound within the hole space that was dug. Advice here is to dig a bigger hole and maybe mix something in to the fill back soil to keep it a bit loose, so they get a transition zone. By the time they reach the further out “wall” it’s not so different.

Potted vines don’t have as high a success rate as dormants and require more water.

Übers have pros and cons: as mentioned there is no need to train them to the wire, saving yourself a year’s growth. But if you ever need to re-train a water-shoot in case of ESCA or some other trunk disease or to simply lower the head, it isn’t an option with Übervines because it is all rootstock except for the top 3 inches.

So, give and take.

Cheers,
Bill

True, but you can also chip graft to that large section of rootstock.

Interesting that after all these years (5?), my replants are shooting up! I think they want the life that this location promised to offer them: winter rains! Have not had that until this year. Let’s see how they progress. This is the most vigorous I have ever seen them.

We also have challenges with replants - our 3ft spacing probably does not help.
This year we are attempting to propagate from a neighboring vine - we buried the tip of a strong cane. Hopefully the established vine will provide some energy. Obviously we will have an own-rooted vine but not had any issues with an acre of own-rooted we planted in 2005.
Visited the N.Rhone earlier this month - when they replant they dig out a hole approx 2ft across and 2ft deep in order to remove any competing roots, etc.

I have 6 feet between vines and 9 feet between rows.

Ok, just checked out the half dozen or so replants that give me occasional heartache. 2 on the outermost row and at the very southern end of the vineyard still are not prospering. Maybe my non-farming neighbor’s nearby conifer is interfering with water and sun? It’s just 2, but of perhaps 475 vines.

The other 4 are doing better, and have some nice looking clusters, but that soil is drying out. Rain is in the forecast for tomorrow. And I think I have a clue here that perhaps I need to drag buckets of water out to those 3-4 guys…they are nearest the location of the house, but it gets hard to focus on them. But 5 vines of 500 are 1%, correct? I think they simply need more water than the rest of the vineyard needs.

So, to recap: the vineyard is .66 acres, 6x9 spacing, quadrilateral, so each vine (based on 4 spurs per cordon) is expected to produce a minimum of 64 clusters. I realize this is smaller than many “hobby” vineyards, but this is a somewhat successful vineyard to bottle effort. Terroir and attention.

I was grafting over some vines that went in as replants in 2016 today and remembered this thread. I tried the Duarte Uber vines in this instance, and the results were much better than any other replant MO that I’ve tried. These vines were fully ready to be productive this year, whereas other replants that are 10 years older remain pretty useless. These benefitted from going in when all the established vines around them was getting grafted over, but still, the Ubers were impressive. And it was good advice from this board that pointed me in that direction.

Stewart - Glad to hear the success you had with the tall grafts. As I mentioned we only plant custom tall grafted plants. Not all nurseries are created equal when it comes to tall grafts and there are specific requirements when selecting and cleaning the trunk wood and conditions to growth them out in. Sounds like Duarte, which I have not used, is a good nursery for tall grafts. We will be trying an experiment next year where the nursery makes the graft and stabilizes it before shipping to me. What that means is that we will grow out the vine in year one instead of the nursery doing that step. Over the past few years I have learned more about tall grafts from a practical aspect and from newer research in Europe. Tall grafts have a higher watering requirement when new & young. Also in humid areas of the east, and maybe fog prone areas, it’s important to make a distance of 3-4 inches between the graft union and the point of training lay down canes. The reason is that yearly canes near the graft union lead to wood diseases from repetitive cuts. Those cuts lead to ESCA and other problems with tall grafts. With normal grafts one does not see that as the graft union is distant from the training point. Congrats on replacing vines in your vineyard.

We plant new fields diligently for the first 3 years and don’t bother after that. The irrigation intervals don’t really match up after that. Once the field is up and going we’re not watering often enough for young plants. Hand watering is about the only other option.

My unsuccessful replants loved this past winter’s rains. I need to check on them one by one, but I know most of them are finally pumping and holding clusters! I think one died out at the far corner. The neighbor finally removed the evergreen tree that was close to that corner, and I may have better luck there this year. I am on the porch doing updates for my corporate wine insurance, but with that done, out I go to check on those baby replants.

That’s why I think that replanting only in sections where I’m grafting makes sense – partly because the neighboring vines have little canopy to suck up the replants’ water and partly because it’s the one time, after establishment, that I’ll irrigate early and often enough to suit replants’ needs.

My single replants are all thriving - only lost one and that one is dead, dead, dead. The other handful of vines are bearing some nice clusters.

I had a successful extending of the vineyard in 2002 - essentially a small block of 20 plants close together, and they are grownups. Those plug-ins of singles just take a long time to pan out - if at all.

I’m loving this weather: hot days, breezes coming from the west in the afternoon, and very cool nights. We typically get some kind of heat spike/wave around the 4th of July - let’s see what happens this year.