Thompson Seedless Grape

AZbonsai

AZbonsai

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3 weeks ago I dug up a grape vine that was stuck in the middle of nowhere in my yard after I moved a bird cage it had been growing on. Barerooted it and stuck it in pure pumice in a not so bonsai pot. Crossed my fingers and man has it really come back great! Even has started to throw some fruit.
I removed all but two of the bunches of grapes. Now just waiting to see what it turns into.
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Just a piece of advice: I stripped the bark off of our 28+ year old vine, and for the first time in those 28 years it was scale free for the entire year. The scale seem to like it underneath the strips and you don't notice how much there are until you start stripping. Real rewarding process by the way, the live and deadwood on these things is amazing.
They peel easier than most junipers too! Way easier! The flaking bark does come back in a year or two by the way, so if the result isn't to your liking, it'll just take a relatively short time to get it back to original.
 
Nice vine, that has enough caliper to be interesting. I like grape as bonsai if the trunk has enough diameter to be interesting. Leaves are always too large, but the trunks are cool enough to make up for the leaves. And ripe fruit hanging is a great look.

Yours in nice, and when ripe, you can eat the grapes. Eat your Bonsai.
 
Leo in N E Illinois said:
you can eat the grapes
Click to expand...
I've eaten the foliage too! Not very tasty, but I've made some nice minced meat rolls with them.

As for getting the most amount of grapes in a non-grapey part of Europe, the secret is to cut back to the trunk in year 1. Let it run free in year two, select strong shoots in the fall and cut back the rest. The shoot will go woody-ish and in year 3, boom:

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Enough to make 10L of terrible wine!
 
I used to make wine, from 3 backyard vines, a Seyve-Villard, Cayuga and Concord vines. Concord wine tastes like grape jelly, which is hard to pair with food, other than peanut butter. My whites, the Cayuga and Seyve-Villard varied wildly, some years really nice, like a light sweet Rhine or Moselle wine. Some years too strong, like a Chardonnay gone bad, lots of off flavors. I found the trick was to pick the whites early, before they became too sweet.

A lot of work for what more often than not became pretty mediocre wine. The concord vine is still in the yard, and occasionally I bring the grapes to Mom's house and we make grape jam. That usually comes out really good.
 
Nice! I've always wanted a grape bonsai but haven't find any decent one yet. Still looking.
 
You can always pinch off the tiniest grapes, so that the rest will get bigger and heavier ;-)
 
Did you fertilize it with anything to get all those grapes? I recently acquired a thick trunk Vanessa grape and learning how to care for it. Mine is all leaves now. ThanksD6D8FC67-C42B-41ED-8AFD-80B4CFE40D95.jpeg2B32BAD4-D063-4907-A8F8-A89965BF3DF5.jpeg
 
@vp999 you're from a colder area like I am, at least, that's what I imagine D.C. to be like. My grapes have just started producing flower clusters. Around july or august I expect my grapes to look like those from AZbonsai.
I'd wait a little bit longer if I were you. They'll show up eventually.
 
I rotated weekly with these two fertilizers.
I will probably vertilize 1 more time before heat catches up to me.
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