Those are flowers of the grape vine and if pollinated they will form grape clusters.

I read your post again and I'm now assuming that no grapes set after last years bloom. If that is the case you may have to wait on someone else to help. My one and only grape vine normally sets grapes after the bloom period. Sorry I can't help. Bill

Last year I found a couple of grapes late in the season and tasted them, and they were delicious green grapes. Very sweet. I started the vine from seeds. Then I had the plant on a small arbor in too much shade and it never formed any clusters or flower buds at all. Last year was it's second year in this position in more sun and it did have these clusters on them but I don't think there were very many.

This year there are a lot of clusters. If they are waiting for bees to pollinate them, I've not seen many bees at all this year. I have some shrubs that had flowers and now the flowers are gone by and there should be berries in heavy clusters, but only part of the berries are formed. I have clover all over the lawn and I counted three bees in it yesterday. *sigh*

So I can't pollinate them by hand? They don't need a second variety for cross pollination, right?

Here is another photo of more of these clusters. Hope you can see the clusters. The photos shrink in size when posted here.

Thanks for the help!

If you started it from seed, it is possible that it needs another to pollinate. At least, some grape varieties do need pollinators; they just aren't the commonly grown kind.

Here are the ways the various flowers look:
http://www.hort.cornell.edu/reisch/grapegenetics/breeding/crossing1.html

Maybe your vine is female? (??) Just a guess. I've never grown a grape that wasn't a hermaphrodite, from cuttings, so I haven't seen the separate flowers myself.

Your clusters look just like my grapes did during bloom. You have some of the buds that have opened to flowers and some that will soon open. After the bloom expires a small grape appears that looks similar to the bud at least for a short period of time. Honeybees do not visit my flowering grape. Other very small insects appear to do the pollination. I would like to know if you have small grapes in about two weeks. Good luck, Bill

Most grapes are self fertile and wind pollinated. No help needed.

Thanks you all for the information. And thanks Meredith for the link. So I will wait for two weeks and see if I see any beginning grapes at that point and post more photos. If they are wind pollinated I should have grapes, it's been very windy here this season.

One other question, this vine is not in full sun. It is in the shadow of the house in the morning. I haven't timed the exact number of hours of sun it is getting, but if it is producing flowers, can I assume it is getting enough sun?

Seedling grapes are not guaranteed to be self pollinating. They are really not guaranteed to have any specific predictable character.

If this one produces any quality fruit at all, someone got very lucky. Furthermore some varieties of quite a number of species are only partially self pollinating, with a much better fruit set if another pollinator is available. If you continue to get only partial clusters that may be the case. It is probably too early to tell. You may need a few more years of growth to know for sure.

To get quality fruit at all out of a seedling is pretty lucky. This plant may well be worth saving; most seedlings aren't, since most parentages are complex hybirds, that resort unpredictably. But it may also need a pollinator and will almost certainly need proper pruning to produce the best flowering.

It takes years of evaluations before most fruit varieties of any kind normally even get named and most of those don't even get released. It sounds like you are starting to get good fruit now and that normally improves as the vines mature.

I would say that all your first signs are very encouraging.

I just happen to notice yesterday that I'm pretty sure I have grapes on my vine! Small green balls where those flowers used to be. Lots of them. :-) I'm keeping my fingers crossed. Sorry I wasn't able to get a photo yet, but I'll post one, first chance I get. I don't want to get ahead of myself and get excited and then find out they're not grapes.

My grape vine also gets too much shade but I still get a few clusters. It will be interesting to see what quality of grape you get from a seedling. Good luck, Bill

Let us know how they turn out, I am curious how they look/taste.

I just found my own seedling yesterday, I have some purple raspberries in my black raspberry row. It must have been a cross from the red raspberries one row over. They are very tasty but more like black raspberry in size.

Scott

The whole of the Napa valley is grape vines. The vines tend to produce more foliage than is needed and the farmers here remove excess foliage during the season to allow more sunlight to reach the grapes. They also remove some clusters, and suckers. All this costs money, and they would not do it if was not to benefit the harvest. Al

So are these grapes? And are the clusters filling in the way they are supposed to or is this a partial fill in? And by the way, can you see any problems with the foliage from this photo? On the left middle of the photo there are some brown spots on that leaf. I've pulled off a number of those. At first I thought it was insect damage, but lately I've been wondering if it is rust? Grapes are known to get that right?

And if these are grapes, how long before they will be ripe enough to eat and are there any tips on how to keep them from being eaten by insects or birds when they start to ripen?

Your grapes appear to be growing well and look normal to me. This being a seedling you do not have the advantage of years of study that goes into released varieties. If you remember when the few that ripened last year, this will most likely be about when they will ripen this year. With a tremendous amount of luck you may end up with a great grape with the disease resistance to one day be a household name. Good luck, Bill

Well, what do you know! lol I'll have to take a couple more photos of the whole vine. Very happy I don't have to think about ripping the whole thing out and starting over again.

I wonder if just before they ripen, I should cover them with some kind of netting or Remay to keep birds or yellow jackets off them?

edit: Oh, btw, I did go back in my records to see what the name of the variety of seeds they were. I had traded for the seed and the person who sent them labeled them, 'Northern Grapes, red and white', and that's it.

This post was edited by prairiemoon2 on Tue, Jul 1, 14 at 5:34