How to protect your grape crop

Steve and Val Bradley explain how to save your grape crop from birds and insects

- Steve and Val Bradley

WITH the average summer getting warmer and longer than in previous years, this is a good time to try growing plants that have long been regarded as difficult, such as grapes.

Introduced by the Romans

Not that growing grapes in the UK is new. It is thought the Romans introduced vines into Britain and by the time of the Domesday Book there were 42 recorded vineyards. When Henry VIII took the throne in 1509, there were more than 100 (of which 11 supplied the royal household), but production suffered in the 17th century when wet weather brought damaging fungal diseases.

UK’s improved terroir

Since then, production has gradually increased in the UK. Now, big French wine companies are buying and developing neglected fruit orchards in Kent and land along the South Coast of England because the weather in France has become too unpredictable, with hard, late frost in spring and dry summers. The sunny, chalky South Downs are an almost identical terroir (soil and environment) to areas in France. Not that grape growing is limited to the south: we recently had correspondence from a gardener in Elgin, about 450 miles north of London, showing us pictures of his very productive grapevine.

Natural predation