Growing Grape Vines: Pest Control and Grape Diseases
If you are growing grape vines you will have some enemies. These include insects, birds, deer and grape diseases. All of these could stand in the way of that perfect harvest that you are dreaming about!
Some common grape diseases include mildew, black rot, phomopsis cane and leaf spot, and fungus. Some symptoms that you may notice include a discoloration of the leaves, leaves covered with a film or lesions, or even a decay of the grapes. Normally a fungicide can take care of this. Just make sure that you do careful research before any treatments.
There are many different types of insects just waiting for your grape vines to start growing. Grape berry moths lay their eggs directly on the surface of the grapes. The larva then hatches and bore into the berries leaving behind small holes and webbing between berries indicating a problem. Look on the underside of the leaves for grape leafhoppers. The good news is that it usually takes a high population of them to do any real damage to your vines. And your yield can be greatly reduced by the Japanese Beetle. And another beetle, the rose chafer, will feed directly on te clusters of grapes. Your grape vines can stand some damage from insects. You should have planned on this when considering your yield. However, if you see it getting out of control, you may have to resort to insecticides. Insecticides can be dangerous, so read and follow the directions carefully.
Perhaps one of your biggest enemies will be birds. A bigger flock will be easier to scare away than individual birds. This makes both devastating to your crop. One solution could be to place bird netting over the grape vines. Be careful with this solution because if you put it too close to the vines, it could collect ice in the winter and damage your vines. The netting would be easy to install because of the trellis system. There are cannons on the market that give off loud blasts at timed intervals. You would set them to go off during the feeding times. This would not be a good solution for a small grower in town with vines in their backyard, as it would probably get complaints from the neighbors. Visual repellents can also be effective and easy to install. You could use something as simple as an aluminum pie plate hanging from a string, or purchase predator decoys such as hawks, owls or snakes.
Farther out in the country deer could be a problem. Especially early in the spring when their other food sources are scarce and your grape vines are starting to develop shoots and leaves. Odor repellents are an effective way to move the deer out. Some of the scents could include human, dog, soap, or coyote. The coyote is a natural predator of the deer, so this would be very effective.
So to get the yield that you planned on when growing your grape vines, you need to keep the grape diseases and pests under control. If you don’t, you may not have enough grapes to make wine!
