Growing your own vineyard can be a worthwhile experience, especially when your grape vines give you sweet and succulent bunches of grapes.
Depending on the kind you are growing, your harvested grapes can be eaten raw or used to make wine, jelly, juice, raisins, prunes, and other products.
Harvesting sizeable quantities of these juicy treats may even lead you to think of selling them fresh on the market or mass-producing the aforementioned grape products.
Tempting as it may seem, growing grapes can turn out to be a headache and a waste of your investment if not done properly.
Only a decent set of grape growing tips will keep you from wasting your efforts and spare you from such a headache.
One way of avoiding the need for Advil, is to consider the geographical location of the area you are planning to transform into a grape vineyard.
The location of a soon-to-be vineyard is significant because it foretells the weather conditions of that area.
And grapes, well, they can get a bit picky.
Though all grapes thrive in warm, sunny conditions, some varieties are able to withstand winter while others aren't able to survive the cold season at all.
Save yourself from this dilemma and do your research to find out which grape varieties are suited to grow in your region.
Another good pointer from the list of grape growing tips is to carefully plan where in your garden you are going to plant your grapes.
You may not be new to the fact that grapes need all the sunshine they can get but homeowners often make the mistake of planting their grapes in shaded areas of their garden.
You will know if you have made this mistake if your grape vines go berserk and leave the spaces of their assigned trellises to climb the nearest trees and shrubs.
They are doing this because they aren't getting enough sunlight in your garden.
To avoid depriving your grapes of sunlight and speed up their ripening, watch your garden throughout the day and take note where the shadows fall.
You can even go the extra mile by measuring the temperatures in different parts of your garden over a couple of days.
The spots with the warmest temperatures all through the day and where shadows fall less are the optimal places for grape growing.
Adequate spacing is also one of the most important grape growing tips.
Homeowners usually make the mistake of stuffing their limited garden spaces with too many grape vines.
Placing grape vines too close to each other makes them fight against each other for available resources such as sunlight, water, and nutrients from the soil.
As a future grape grower, you should know that the more vigorous grape vines are, the more space they require when planted alongside each other.
Thus, with a small garden space, choose grape vines with low vigor as they can be planted within 6-feet of each other.
An even smaller garden should prompt you to grow kinds with very low vigor because they can be planted at minimum intervals of 4 feet.
Growing vigorous varieties is an option only if you have a wide, open space to grow grape vines.
Vigorous grape vines require the larger spacing of 8 feet.
Of course, never make your grape vines thirsty.
Grapes need their water just as much as we humans do.
They need to be watered actively during the spring and summer when they are fast-growing.
Water therapy of once a week is enough for them in areas with scanty rain but they should be watered more often during droughts.
As soon as the grapes color, you can then relax and stop watering them as this only slows down their ripening.
But when fall comes and the leaves have fallen, water them heavily for one last time before they freeze in the winter.
Most importantly, never forget to prune your vines every year as they grow older.
Pruning will prevent problems such as tangling of the grape vines, overbearing and delayed ripening of the grapes, grape vine diseases, and even premature death.
Following this and all the above grape growing tips will not only deter headaches and regrets, it will also permit you to savor the fruits of your labor - grapes that is.