Quote:
Originally Posted by someone
Thank you to everyone who replied. I've had a poke around in the soil thinking it might be vine weevil, but there is no sign of any, or not that I could see. I doubt it was the cold weather since we haven't had a frost for quite a while now. Also, I have a much older, neglected grapevine behind a nearby greenhouse and, while it's only got a few leaves at the moment it's certainly not dying. I wonder if it could be a combination of the sick one being really advanced, together with very damaging winds about a week ago.
I'm not sure why being well watered would be a problem, since it's not
soaking or anything, and the garden has been extremely dry lately.
I am afraid I will have to read the sick one the last rites, since I can't
find a solution yet.
someone
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There's a very large number of diseases grape vines can succumb to, in addition to the well known ones, but you'll need some specialist books, probably written in French, to find them. There seems to be a bumper harvest every year in France these days, but go back to the 60s and 70s, and poor flowering and poor fruit set and all sorts of other nasties used to be a common problem in the vineyards - good years were uncommon then. Although there have hardly been any real frosts in much of England since early April, we have had some cold winds. If you have an early-starting vine, it could well have been set back by these winds, but should recover. But otherwise, tips dying back sounds like a bad sign and last rites could be the result.