The other question(s) involves grapes and sugar content. Last year I let too
much fruit hang and the grapes didn't taste as sweet, and didn't have the
varietal flavor. I also didn't fertilize because I always get a terrific
amount of vegetative growth with shoots sometimes running 20 ft in a single
season, and I thought I'd slow em down a little.The questions are, are sugar
content and flavor necessarily inversly proportional to yield? and as an
aside, would using more P and K fertilizer and just holding the N have
improved the sugar while restraining the vegetative growth? Any suggestions
for a general fertilizer mixture for grapes and fruit? Would 10-20-20 be
better than 16-16-16? I know I know, that was a lot more than 2 questions!
Thank You!


The better commercial wine growers will deliberatly reduce the yeild of
their vines, sometimes drastically. When yeilds are not reduced the
grapes are less flavourful, and produce inferior wine. The amount of
sugar in ripe grapes will have a lot to do with the growing conditions,
the most important of which is the weather - something you can't do
anything about. If you reduce the yeild, you will allow the vines to
concentrate flavour and sugar into fewer grapes - getting a tastier
product. If you have more than a couple of vines, I'd suggest
experimenting with allowing certain percentages of the vines to ripen
3/4, 1/2, and 1/4 of the grapes they set. It will allow you to find the
comprimise between quality and quantity that best suits your taste.

Bonnie Punch