Whether you want a snack or to make your own wine, grapes are a delicious addition to backyard gardens. Here's a look at how to grow grapes.
How to Grow Grapes at Home That You Can Eat
Published on Mar. 06, 2025
Varieties of Grapes to Grow
You can grow some type of grape in every region of the U.S. The type of grape you grow depends on your climate and your taste. Maybe you’d like to make jelly. Or perhaps you want to experiment with wine making. The grape variety you choose to grow will depend on the type of wine you wish to make.
Consult your local cooperative extension office or website for specific grape varieties recommended for your region. Here is a directory of cooperative extension websites.
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Best Location for Grapevines
The most important thing to consider when deciding how to grow grapes is where to situate the vines. Grapevines are forgiving when it comes to soil—in fact, they’ll grow quite nicely on stony hillsides—but they need good drainage. They also need plenty of sunlight, so keep them away from shade trees to prevent mildew from forming on the foliage.
In addition, avoid frost pockets in low lying areas, which can damage tender new grapevine growth.
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How to Plant Grapes
To grow grapes, space plants 5 to 6 feet apart in all directions. Position multiple plants in horizontal rows to maximize the use of space and give vines room to spread out and ripen fruit. You can also use grapevines to line a fence or cover a structure such as an arbor. Line the bottom of the planting hole with compost to jump-start plant growth. Tamp the soil and water well.
Fertilizing Grapes
The first season will be about plant growth, not harvesting, so it’s OK to apply a fertilizer high in nitrogen. After that, you want plants to produce grapes, not foliage, so fertilize only if the vines are showing stunted growth or if a soil test shows a nutrient deficiency.
When fertilizing mature grapevines, remember that the roots can spread out up to 8 feet, so apply fertilizer throughout the bed, not just at the base of the plant.
If you see chlorosis (lack of chlorophyll causing yellow or pale leaves), you may need to lower the pH.
Grapevine Pests
Tiny insects cause leaf galls, which look like bumpy warts on grape leaves. Although the foliage may look unsightly, the galls do not affect the grapes, so there is no need to treat the grapevines with pesticides.
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Support the Vines
To efficiently grow grapes, you’ll need to provide some support for the vines. One common method is to connect strands of wire with wooden posts set at specific increments. Serious wine vineyards have as many as five strands of wire but home gardeners can get by with two strands positioned 3 and 5-1/2 feet above the ground.
Tips for Grapevine Pruning
There are a lot of confusing rules to follow when pruning grapevines—and homeowners can ignore most of them. The main thing is to keep your grapevines from becoming a tangled mass of stems at the expense of fruiting. In short, select four good stems and remove the rest. Then train these four stems on the wire support system.
The best time to prune grapes is late winter, when grapevines are dormant. Sucker growth arising from the base can be yanked out in summer.
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Protect Grapes From Wildlife
If you’re learning how to grow grapes, you also need to learn how to protect grapes from deer, rabbits and birds that want to eat them. An 18-inch section of chicken wire will frustrate rabbits and bird netting will dissuade fruit-loving birds. Deter deer with a 10-foot-tall fence or an electric fence. Or try a motion detector connected to a sprinkler system.
Weeding and Mulching
Apply mulch to keep the area beneath the vines free of weeds. Stone or gravel mulch reflects sunlight back to the plants and won’t break down and make the soil too rich over time (which encourages the growth of foliage rather than flowers and grapes).
Some gardeners remove flowers the first couple of years so the plants can concentrate their energy on forming stronger roots and canes.
Watering Grapevines
Watering is important the first year or two. Grapevines are deep-rooted plants that become more drought tolerant as they get established. While withholding water can be beneficial when making certain kinds of wine, those who grow grapes for fresh snacking will have plumper, juicier fruit if grapevines are irrigated during dry spells.
Landscaping With Grapes
Not everyone who wants to grow grapes has a large acreage. Fear not, because grapes are easy to integrate into the home landscape. A grapevine-covered pergola is pretty, gives you shade, and you can still harvest the fruit.
Benefits of Growing Grapes
Grapevines add beauty to your backyard in every season. There’s the rustic, winter interest of dormant vines, the vibrant new foliage in spring, and the mouth-watering fresh fruit in late summer and fall. Some grapevines even have pretty fall foliage! No wonder more home gardeners are discovering the value of growing grapes.
