- Girlish grapes and his hidden talents
- Simple rules for controlling girlish grapes
- Selection of conditions for powerful vines
- Rules for planting maiden grapes
- Elementary care for girlish grapes
- Wintering maiden grapes
Girlish grapes are considered to be one of the largest, fastest growing and hardy perennial vines. The view of its luxurious, effectively reddening foliage at the end of the season, is well known to everyone, because it is the girl’s grapes that are most actively used in urban gardening to decorate buildings. In private gardens, this plant is not very common. He is considered too aggressive, almost uncontrollable, and even conducive to the spread of rodents and pests throughout the site and home. But such a reputation is completely undeserved. 
Girlish grapes. © Tobias Abel
Girlish grapes, being one of the easiest to grow large garden plants, can become a real magic wand. After all, draping high walls does not limit the scope of its use in garden design.
Girlish grapes and his hidden talents
All types and varieties of girlish grapes are used as large and powerful vines. With their help, you can effectively drape the surface of any area. The girlish grape creates a thick, seemingly ornamental and almost tiled covering due to the peculiar arrangement of the leaves and independent regulation of the uniform distribution of the light coming to them.
Dazzling bright orange or scarlet autumn color, the beauty and pomp of the crown, the ease and reliability of self-attachment of the plant do not know the competitors among the vines. In all types of girlish grapes, antennae densely branch and cling so tightly to even flat walls that the plant is not threatened even by its own considerable weight at a respectable age.
Girlish grapes are not afraid of pollution, smoke, even any of the most difficult conditions, while maintaining a light gloss of attractive foliage. It is perfect for spectacular gardening of walls, even sheer, any powerful and high supports, decorating the dark, empty sides of buildings and gigantic fences, creating the so-called continuous landscaping and thick even coating.
The girlish grape is able to form surprisingly beautiful green tunnels, turn pergolas into luxurious objects, decorate old trees, gazebos and pavilions. And even these functions do not exhaust the possibilities of its use in landscape design.
The girlish grape is very good as a groundcover crawling plant. It can be used to create amazingly beautiful and lush, dense carpets in those areas where it is impossible to break up grassy lawns or glades of grassy ground covers. He is not afraid of dry open spaces and stony slopes, grows well even in the poorest soils, does not lose the ability to effectively plant the soil even in the thickest shade and at the same time retains all the advantages of greenery in the horizontal plane.
As a ground cover plant, girlish grapes can be grown from cuttings, thick carpet will be created by seedlings located at intervals of about 1 meter, and to speed up the process, seedlings can be positioned twice closer. Decorative and elegant carpet of girlish grapes will create amazingly fast, without requiring virtually any maintenance.
Weeds do not grow and do not spread under grapes; it does not prevent large shrubs and woody trees from growing and developing, which makes it one of the most promising crops for planting large areas and areas with difficult conditions.
We should not forget the purely practical virtues of girlish grapes. Through the use of this plant in landscaping, you can achieve much greater efficiency from thermal insulation, protect buildings and garden pavilions with gazebos from wind and rain, because the canopy of the leaves of the girl’s grapes is truly amazingly dense and keeps the structures for a long time from the damaging effects of the environment.
Gardening of the maiden grapes allows in the summer even on the hottest day to enjoy the coolness inside the room or gazebos, in the winter - to make the heating system as efficient as possible, and the heat loss to be minimal.
Girlish grapes. © Insomniac's Attic
Simple rules for controlling girlish grapes
The notorious aggressiveness of a girl's grape manifests itself only when the plant is given full will and does not even care about the elementary control of its development or care for decades. False grapes, with careful monitoring of its spread and timely containment, will never creep uncontrollably into the garden, damage wall or roofing materials, create shade, dampness and twine everything around.
Simple controlling pruning is all that is needed for this plant. If you see that the grapes are developing too actively or their shoots begin to creep into areas where they are not needed, simply cut off the excess and shorten the vines. The more the girlish grapes are cut, the more its foliage thickens, the ornamental crown pattern and leaf color is revealed and the easier it is to cope with its tendency to grow quickly.
But this is not all simple tricks that will help contain the aggressiveness of the girl's grapes and avoid unwanted seizure of the territory. Having achieved dramatic surface draping and the desired effect, it is enough to exclude watering and top dressing from the grape care system completely - and its growth will not stop, but it will slow down significantly. The plant will look good and fresh, but will cease to actively increase the height and volume.
'Star showers monham' girlish grapes. © julie weisenhorn
Selection of conditions for powerful vines
For a girl's grape to develop and grow successfully, it does not even need to carefully select certain parameters of lighting or soil. This is one of the most unpretentious and hardy garden plants. The girlish grape is able to adapt to almost any conditions, survives even where there is no fertile soil or if it grows in a limited amount of it.
It can be planted both in the most lighted areas of the garden, suitable for light-loving crops, on the southern side of the buildings, and in fairly thick shade. These are shade-tolerant, but not shade-loving lianas, and under the dense crowns of trees or on the north side of buildings it is better to plant it only when the plant is illuminated by the sun for at least a few hours a day. The highest efficiency of all types and varieties of maiden grapes in the penumbra reach very different intensity from deep to scattered.
As for the soil, any of its disadvantages, from poor handling and compaction to poor nutrient content or excessive lime and acidity, can be compensated for during planting. Girlish grapes can grow literally in any soil, even dry, but when planting plants, you must follow some rules of elementary agricultural practices. The advantages of maiden grapes are ranked and the ability to endure a transplant at any age.
Girlish grapes
Rules for planting maiden grapes
Planting is essentially the only difficult component of growing this vine. Girlish grapes can be planted in the spring, as in the middle of autumn.
Saplings of maiden grapes should be located 1 m from buildings or supports, along which they will have to rise and at a distance of about 1 m from other large plants.
Before planting it is better to dig the soil for future cultivation together. For the girl's grapes harvested large planting pits, similar to woody plants. The optimal size of the landing hole is about 60 cm in depth and width. A powerful drainage layer about 20 cm high is necessarily laid on the bottom, using fragments of broken brick, crushed stone and sand to create the best possible water permeability.
All the ground taken out of the landing hole needs to be improved: completely replaced with ready-mixed soil, or just add peat, compost and sand. The best for girls' grapes is considered to be ground mix consisting of equal parts of peat, compost and leafy earth with the addition of half the share of sand.
In order for the girl's grapes to successfully take root and begin to grow rapidly, it is sufficient to correctly set the seedlings in the planting pit. The root neck of young plants should be located exactly at the level of the soil. It can not be buried or raised above the ground line. After planting, it is necessary to immediately carry out charging irrigation, using up to 2 buckets of water for each plant.
In the first year after planting, especially if the saplings obtained by cutting are used, it is better to provide the plants with minimal care. The girlish grapes will gratefully respond to the mulching of the soil about 6 cm in height, which will completely abandon weeding and loosening, and on irrigation with additional dressings.
Elementary care for girlish grapes
This plant practically does not need any additional procedures. More intensive care will be needed only for young plants, and even then, if you want to achieve the fastest possible upholstery of the wall or structure in the shortest possible time.
In order to stimulate the active growth of girlish grapes, two dressings per year can be made for plants. In the spring or in June, about 40-50 g of any complete mineral fertilizer is applied for it, and approximately one month or two after the first top-dressing, organic matter is used or the mineral top-dressing is repeated. But fertilizers are applied only for those girlish grapes, in which they want to stimulate active growth of height and size.
Watering this vine as such is not needed. But a prolonged drought can provoke an actual cessation of growth, therefore, in a dry and hot summer, the plant is watered 3-4 times in the morning or in the evening, providing compensation for adverse weather conditions. For girlish grapes use 1-2 buckets of water for each liana. If you restrain the growth of the Spiderman, then watering can also be excluded from the care.
At least once a year, try to break through the soil, remove large weeds or carry out mulching, which prevents their development in the tree trunks.
The girlish grape is prone to a gradual elevation in the soil and the exposure of the rhizome. If you notice that the roots of the plant begin to protrude above the ground, be sure to sprinkle on fresh soil and slightly tuft the vine. Usually this procedure is carried out in the autumn, as part of preparing the garden for the winter.
Pruning as such, maiden grapes are not needed, except for the removal of dry and damaged shoots and situations when it is necessary to restrain the vine and not let it go beyond the allotted area. Elementary cutting of some branches or shortening unnecessary ones will allow you to effectively control plant growth.
Virgin grape is completely resistant to diseases and pests. It is easy to make your way to rodent buildings through its whips, but elementary measures at the base of the vines in the form of traps and baits make it easy to solve this problem.
Girlish grapes
Wintering maiden grapes
In the conditions of regions with severe winters, the only fully winter-hardy species is virgin virgin grape, better known as five-leafed. Although Henry's grapes, tri-pointed, Thompson, the leaves are even more decorative and they are also very good both as creepers and as a ground cover, they will need shelter and removal from supports for the winter.
In the first year after planting, it is better to cover all the maiden grapes with dry leaves and spruce branches, and in the future, the five-leaflet will not need any protection.
