black grape vine

Black Grape
Grape Vine, "Black Hamburg"

Black Hamburg grape growing in Dundee, Scotland

The Black grape, Black Hamburg is the most widely grown variety in Scotland. It is easy to grow this grape vine which fruits in abundance readily, and does not need any heat to ripen the fruit.

John has one plant with two rods spaced at two feet apart growing vertically, shown in a cold glasshouse in their second year.
The shoots are regularly pruned during the summer at two leaves after each fruiting bunch, then subsequent sideshoots are stopped at one leaf.
In winter in January I cut back all growth to one or two buds at the main stem or rod.

This allows ample foliage for cropping but without overcrowding.

Flame, a red seedless grape

An excellent red seedless grape easy to grow in Scotland in the cold greenhouse is Flame. It is very early, two weeks ahead of Black Hamburg, producing large bunches of smaller red sweet juicy grapes that do not need thinning.

Click on the images to enlarge.

Perlette, a white seedless grape

John has just planted another variety Perlette, a white seedless variety so hopefully this will grow and give its first grapes in 2011.

Outdoor grape Brant in Scotland

John has also got a very successful and prolific outdoor grape called Vitis vinifera Brant which produces over one hundred bunches of small but very sweet and juicy bunches of black grapes. It grows on a south and west wall benefitting from a sunny southern aspect.
I am also trying a new early variety called Solaris outdoors, but they could benefit from a wee bit of serious sunshine. Maybe global warming in Scotland will give us warmer, but wetter summer weather, which is not necessarily good for grapes, but who knows the future. I could be (hopefully) very wrong.

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