Someone in another group I read wants to move some 100 year old grape vines . Any chance of success ? My understanding is that they root very deeply , wondered if that would make it difficult to avoid transplant shock .
depends upon what type of vines. if they are grafted upon different root stock, etc.
how many vines?
if they are self-rooted (all the same plant with no graft) then they would be much better off by taking cuttings from 1yr wood and rooting those (similar to how you'd do roses or many other woody stemmed plants).
I don' know ... were they grafting grape vines on hardy rootstock a hundred years ago? I had suggested to her that cloning might be an option ... but grafting would probably be the best option if that's how the original was propagated .
I have not done it (yet) but I poked around a bit and found several success stories of moving huge old vines (prune the vine back hard, first, seems to be a common theme.) Cuttings are easier to handle, but the old vine will be back to fruiting faster. Remember that grapes fruit off of new wood and require fairly hard pruning to produce well.
Timing will also matter - you are likely near (or past) the end of the "spring window" for moving them, and long past the best time for pruning (dead of winter.) Fall is probably a better time to move, so the roots can re-establish over the winter. Moving them with leaves on seems doubtful in the extreme.
You'll be losing a good deal of root material (I don't know how deep they go, but they certainly go wide, based on the ones I find) but that will re-grow as well.
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