Dates: August 12 & 13, 2015
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Figure 1. A bundle of healthy grafted grape vines. These vines are moist, have healthy roots, and are clearly labeled.

Spring is a good time to plant new grapevines as the soil is warm and moist enough to support early growth and vines get plenty of time to get established during the growing season that follows. When your order of vines arrives, make sure that your planting material is of good quality before it is planted.

Source Planting Materials from Quality Nurseries

The best way to begin ensuring that you have good, healthy and productive grapevines is to source planting material from nurseries that provide clean materials or certified vines. Planting material from nurseries that follow quality assurance protocols reduces the chances of getting diseased or weak planting material.
Certified material means cuttings come from a source block that was properly managed, subjected to regular inspections for insect pests, disease damage, and tested for virus right from propagation through packaging. These nurseries also go through independent third party audits.

Make sure that planting material comes with documents or labels that will help in tracing plants back to the original source. Each bundle of vines should have proper labels describing primary information such as variety, clone, rootstock and some kind of batch number. Make sure your planting material was shipped promptly after packing and came in a temperature-controlled vehicle. Presently there are no certified nurseries in New Jersey; however, there are several certified nurseries available in California and few in Oregon, Washington and New York. [Read more…]