I was offered some free grape vine starts...

[sleuth]

She described it as "a fence full of grapevine. I've never seen it have grapes but it is very pretty" and offered to let me take some starts.

My question is if it's not producing now, should I expect any different if I take a cutting? I don't want to bother if I can't expect it to grow some grapes.

 

[Britesea]

There are "ornamental" plants that look just like grapes but don't produce fruit... is your friend positive that these are real grapes?

 

[~gd]

There are "ornamental" plants that look just like grapes but don't produce fruit... is your friend positive that these are real grapes?

Also many wild grape vines produce very little fruit and if you had a late frost even very heavy bearers may have no grapes this year. It boils down to do you trust your neighbor who said she had never seen fruit on it. Why should she lie about something like that? I would look elswhere for my starts. and look fast because you want them well transplanted before the freeze hits,~gd most serious vineyards do their trimming during the winter and they are useless for starts. If they want a start they cover a lower vine with dirt and wait for roots to form

 

[rhoda_bruce]

I've been wanting to take some cuttings from wild muscadines at my Dad's camp and bring them to my woods and plant them everywhere. Your friend should know. I don't know about shoots, but cuttings would give you exactly whatever your friend has. Maybe some of the vines found their way to touch the ground and are actually cuttings....idk.

 

[sleuth]

She said she's lived there 3 years and never seen fruit on them, though she does make stuffed grape leaves.

 

[rhoda_bruce]

Never heard of it. Not sure what to say about that. As to what my mind tells, me, the only hope would be if there is something the vines need to produce, that she isn't offering, that you can provide and then fruit will appear. Free is good, but I don't have room or time to invest in something that won't produce. Unless you have woodlands, like me, to put a few to experiment and see what it will give you, without needing attention, then I can't see the feasibility of training up vines that might not give you anything.
Maybe I'm just not looking at it in a completely fair manner though.

 

[sleuth]

Never heard of it. Not sure what to say about that. As to what my mind tells, me, the only hope would be if there is something the vines need to produce, that she isn't offering, that you can provide and then fruit will appear. Free is good, but I don't have room or time to invest in something that won't produce. Unless you have woodlands, like me, to put a few to experiment and see what it will give you, without needing attention, then I can't see the feasibility of training up vines that might not give you anything.
Maybe I'm just not looking at it in a completely fair manner though.

I'm sort of going along the same lines. I just don't have the time to invest in something that has a high likelihood of not producing.

 

[Daffodils At The Sea]

Grapes do need some research because some of them need large numbers of chill hours to produce fruit (like over 300) , and if it's not cold enough, you won't get fruit, or very little. And then it has to be hot enough during the day to get them sweet. So trust the fact that she's never seen fruit on them, that's it's not her doing.

A local nursery should carry grapes that will do well in your area. Be sure you know your zone, and don't get seduced by the fancy descriptions, (my big downfall!!) or thinking that you might possible be able to pull it off where you are. You want them to be as big and healthy and mainstream for your area as possible.

I have several different kinds of grapevines that I thought would do well here, but they aren't. It's hard to believe sometimes that a Zone 8 grape wouldn't do well in Zone 9, but it's true. Same with blackberries and other vining fruit. You might get great foliage, they will look healthy and vigorous, and the fruit just bombs.

 

[Denim Deb]

I know I bought grapes years ago. And, the produced very little and what they did produce was sour. So, I got rid of them.

 

[Daffodils At The Sea]

One more thing I thought of, grapes drop their leaves in the winter, so it will be a wall of bare wood vines. that unless you spend a lot of time making them go in attractive directions, will go all over the place. Do you want an evergreen wall?