Fox Grape

Size, growth and what to expect

No source rates its growth, so our growth estimator uses the fast rate of our other wild grapes, nearly three feet a year. It climbs 20 to 40 feet into trees by its tendrils or sprawls over shrubs. The bark of older stems is rough and shreds in strips.

Fragrant, yellow-green flowers open in May and June. Clusters of up to about 20 grapes follow, each up to three quarters of an inch across and dark purple to black. They ripen from August into October and drop one by one, and many birds and mammals eat them.

It grows wild from Maine and southern Ontario west to Michigan, Wisconsin and Illinois, and south to Georgia and Mississippi. It lives in upland and lowland woods, on bottomlands that flood now and then, at forest edges and in thickets and along roadsides. Escaped hybrids of the Concord kind have gone wild in Utah and the Pacific Northwest. Kentucky lists it as threatened.

How to grow Fox Grape

Fox grape fruits best in full sun, and the more sun it gets, the sweeter the grapes. It does best in deep, loamy soil that stays evenly moist, and it tolerates most soils if they drain well. Site it out of frost pockets and winter wind, since late frosts can hurt the new shoots. It climbs by tendrils, so give it a sturdy arbor, fence or trellis to grip. It can climb to the tops of tall trees or sprawl over shrubs, so keep it off ornamental trees and shrubs. Set the support 8 feet from a wall, and set vines 15 feet apart along it. It climbs whatever it reaches, so keep it more than 50 feet from overhead wires.

Saplings ship bare-root or potted. Plant them dormant, from leaf fall until bud swell, in a hole wider than the roots and no deeper. Set the crown at the soil line, put the native soil back in, and keep the mulch clear of the stem. Tie the first shoots to the support until the tendrils take hold. Strip the ripe grapes, and wash the seed clean of the pulp. For a spring sowing, hold the seed damp in the refrigerator for 3 to 4 months first. Seedlings rarely come true, so Concord and other named varieties are grown from cuttings.

Water weekly through the first summer if rain is short. Prune it every year and train it along its support, since a vine needs both to bear well. Deer eat young shoots, leaves and fruit, so cage young vines where deer are many.

Vines are male or female, and only females bear grapes, so plant three or more seedlings for a male and a female. Black rot, anthracnose, downy and powdery mildew and bunch rot can strike, especially in humid summers. Grape berry moths and Japanese beetles are its worst insects, and birds take a share of the crop. Moonseed, a poisonous look-alike, climbs without tendrils, has leaves with no teeth, and holds one crescent-shaped seed in each berry. Other vines with similar fruit are poisonous too, so be sure of the plant before eating its grapes.