iNaturalist said in the grape vine family which feels wild to me, if it is then having wild grapes growing around was not what I was expecting.
iNaturalist said in the grape vine family which feels wild to me, if it is then having wild grapes growing around was not what I was expecting.
That’s crazy to me, I thought all grapes had to be grown grafted because the root systems couldn’t handle something something at a vineyard. I guess it just means that booze grapes can’t grow in the wild naturally.
European grapes (which most wine is made from) were devastated by phylloxera in the 19th century, and since then they’ve been grown on American grape root stock which is resistant.
It’s not that, it’s that for industrial scale you need them to be “established”…
You can do that by planting and waiting years (maybe decades) for the “good grapes” to become established, or you can just graft the new species onto existing root structures every spring. Allowing you to change year to year what you grow.
Stuff like OPs pic could have a root structure the size of a tiny stick. And they come up naturally all the time. It’ll still produce some grapes, just not at the scale of a for profit vineyard who’s root structures have had 20+ years to grow.