When Do Wild Grape Vines Produce Fruit?

Temperature

• Temperatures are important in the life of a wild grape vine. Although the root system may survive cold winters, some species of wild grapes are not cold hardy enough to produce fruit after especially low freezing temperatures. These cold temperatures kill the buds from the previous year that would normally produce fruit. The unaffected roots will continue to put out new growth in the spring, but the vines will not generate fruit.

Drought

• Drought is a serious problem for any plant, especially during the spring when fruiting plants are trying to produce fruit. Vines pull nutrient-rich water from the ground to support the life of the vine. When that water diminishes, new growth stops. If the drought continues, the vines will slowly dry up without producing fruit.

Maturity

• Grape vines grow quickly under the right conditions, especially wild ones. Since they do not receive pruning, the leaf growth is fast and the vines will stretch many feet in one season. However, grape vines rarely produce fruit the first year, in spite of the large vine. By the second and third year, you should expect to see fruit if all the conditions are right.

Season

• The normal season for grapes to produce fruit is in the early summer. Although the vines develop grapes soon after the leaves bud out, the fruit still takes several months to ripen. If there are no tiny fruits on the wild grape vine after a couple weeks of frost-free weather, the vine is probably not going to produce any fruit that season.