Growing Grapes From Seeds

As much as it is hard to grow grape vines from cuttings and existing planting materials, growing grapes from seeds is way much harder to do but not at all impossible. It will require lots of patience, dedication and serious gardening skills for any grape grower who wants to grow grapes from seeds.

Unless the grower intends to develop a new grape variety, growing grape from seeds is not the ideal way of growing grapes compared to cultivating grape planting materials and cuttings. This is because the grapes grown from seeds do not usually inherit the characteristics of its parent grape and a large percentage of the planted seeds will not germinate. But still, many grape growers insist on this kind of grape growing procedure out of dedication to their craft and a test of their skills as top-notch gardeners.

In some parts of the world, planting materials and grape cuttings for cultivation are not readily available so growers resort to planting grape seeds instead. Indeed, growing grape from seeds is quite difficult to do but with proper approach, gardening skill and an incredible patience you can be successful with this kind of endeavor. Here is the procedure of the proper germination of grape seeds for cultivation:

1)    Obtain grape seeds from a seed nursery or from the grapes you bought from the supermarket. You can also order quality grape seeds on the internet but the easiest way of getting grape seeds is to carefully extract them from the fruit.

2)    Take a small pot with loose, fertile soil and plant your seeds just under the top layer. You can also place the seeds inside the bag, but make sure you transfer them later to a pot.

3)    Put the seeds in a refrigerator for about 30 to 90 days. They must be kept at a constant temperature below 40 degrees to allow them to wake up from dormancy.  If you want, you can place them in a cold and dark spot outdoors during winter. Just make sure they are not exposed to wind and rain and never allow them to freeze.

4)    Take out the seeds from the refrigerator then warm them indoors while still inside the plastic bags. However, do not place the grape seeds in direct sunlight, for they could die because of to much heat.

5)    When the seeds begin to germinate after at least 30 days of warm temperatur , take them out from the plastic bags and place them on your roof or any convenient, sunny and dry place outdoors. Prepare your pot for planting the seeds and make sure the soil inside is kept moist enough but do not over water the soil.

6)    When the seedlings have grown to about 8 cm tall, transplant them into separate pots and then put them in a shady and secured area free from rain and strong winds for the next 10-14 days.

7)    After the prescribed time period, you can now place the seedlings to their permanent locations under direct sunlight. They should be planted at least 96 inches apart. After some time, when you notice the vines crawling, you can then say you’ve accomplished the hardest part of growing grapes from seeds. Now the long process of grave vine cultivation starts.

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