Planting guide
Preparing your planting site
Preparation for planting
Start by marking out the position of your vines. For a row plantation the vine spacing should be 1 to 1.2 m. For a cordon high on a wall or an arbour, one vine every 2 or 3 m.
Dig a hole 50cm by 50cm by 50cm. You may put a little well decomposed dung or compost at the bottom, but covered by loose soil, as it must not be in direct contact with the roots.
Place the plant in the pre-prepared hole. The swelling where the graft was made, must be 3-4cm above the soil level.
Fill the hole with well-compacted soil around the vine plant leaving a bowl shape at the top. Water plentifully. As soon as the water is absorbed, fill in with loose soil.
Comblez le trou en tassant bien la terre autour de la motte en forme de cuvette. Arrosez copieusement. Dès que l'eau a été absorbée, comblez de terre meuble.
Magnesium deficiency
The symptoms are a partial yellowing of the edges of the leaves and then in between the still green leaf veins (on some black vine varieties a reddening instead of the yellowing). The yellowing starts on the leaves at the bottom of the branch first.
At the same time there may be a partial drying of the grape bunches. Magnesium deficiency of the soil is not an illness and can be corrected by scattering a magnesium fertiliser as soon as the symptoms appear, and again the same autumn.
The following year the symptoms of magnesium deficiency should be gone.
Support system
The vine is a creeper plant. It is necessary to give the plant a support system to attach the branches. The support system will be different depending on whether you wish to establish in rows, or in a cordon attached to a wall.
ROW FORMATION
The principle is to maintain the vines in rows using steel wires fixed at different heights on posts in the ground.
1 / Provide one post at each end of the row and one every 5 vines. In order to relieve the tension of the steel wires on the end posts it is better to add a small stake attached to each end post by 2 wires.
2 / The steel wire commonly used is number 15 galvanised (2.4 mm diameter). The lowest wire, on which we attach the pruned branches, is fixed from 60 to 80 cm from the ground.
The other wires can be attached according to one of the following two schemes.
CORDON FORMATION
Once you have chosen the wall, fix in place the supporting elements in wood or metal (angle iron) each of length 30 to 50 cm and spaced 2 to 3 metres apart. Connect these support elements together using 2 or 3 steel wires, which will serve as the support system for the vines.