I’ve recently been put in touch with a friend of a friend who has a small hobby vineyard on his property that he needs some help managing. There are 100-120 Pinot Noir vines, in two different blocks. One block is 6 rows with about 12 plants each, and the other is 6 rows with about 6 plants each. This will be the third year in the ground, though they look younger and there is a lot of weed/grass competition. There also is no fencing, so deer eating the buds will be an issue I imagine. The eventual goal is for the owner to be able to produce a wine for home consumption, with no plans to sell the resulting wine. He also wants to avoid chemicals as much as possible.
I’ve got a couple big questions to start:
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What are the best options for trellising materials for a vineyard this size? There is no trellising at this point, and we’ll want to go VSP.
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After we have the trellising up, what should we use to deter the deer from coming up and eating all the buds/leaves? Would netting suffice?
You should not trouble getting posts in small quantities. The wire may be difficult to find in a small enough quantity.
For our non fenced gardens we have one of those motion sensing sprinklers that works well on the pesky critters. You could also use electric fence tape and string a line to keep bigger animals out. I would still probably net to keep bird damage at bay.
I got post at my local tractor supply company. For wire you can get less than 4000 foot rolls from Kencove Wire as well as other trellis materials.
As for deer protection, I have never needed it. The deer don’t bother my gapes. They eat my Lilies and hostas and sometimes my roses but have not touched my grapes yet. Birds and squirrels are a different story however. My bird pressure has been so bad that I am switching from 5/8th inch square nets to 1/4 inch this year.
John - I’ve probably done more vineyards of this size and type than everyone else here combined.
- You can get everything you need at OSH, HD or Lowe’s for a basic install.
- Fence - Every other idea will fail eventually. Anyone who says deer don’t bother their grapes should go buy a lotto ticket right now. I have about two dozen other things to get rid of them once they’ve started feeding and break their feeding pattern, or get them to leave a vineyard once they’ve started jumping the fencing. I have kept them out of unfenced properties but at great expense and labor. Fence is the answer, it’s just a matter of how long it takes you to get their and how many plants/crops you loose learning that.
Should I go for Wood posts, or is metal a viable option? What kind of wire do I need?
Well I tried but did not hit the Powerball last week. I am as shocked as anyone that they have not started eating. It’s been seven years now and not a nibble. They eat the roses at the end. They walk past them to get to other flowers. I cant explain it. I expected the deer to be the worst problem but so far it has not been the case. I hope I am not damning myself by writing this since fencing for my vineyard is not possible.
I used 4"-5" round wood posts and 12.5 gage HSS wire. I have 3 foot spacing a so was able to get by with 3 posts for the 12 vine rows and 2 posts for the 6 vine rows. Metal posts were not easily available for me when I planted so can’t really talk to the pros/cons of metal vs wood.
For this size I put in wood as end posts, 5 inch rounds. I then put metal freeway posts at every other plant. The freeway post can be hard to find but you can use alternatives. Basically the posts in the middle are just keeping wire in place so you can use 2 inch wood there also if you can’t find metal. Most big hardware store will have wire in a few gages. If they will cut it for you get the larger for your cordon and smaller for catch wires. If not I usually just have people get the smaller since they’re not going to be supporting a big load.
There should be some pictures on our website/blog www.stefaniawine.com of us putting this kind of thing in. I normally don’t anchor for this size, it just is not needed with the loads.