Causes of drying out of grape clusters and measures to combat this

I had not been to the country for a long time, and when I arrived, I found a depressing picture in the vineyard - almost half of the bunches began to dry out. Tell me why the bunches of grapes dry and can you do something about it? It's a pity to lose the harvest, because there are a lot of ovaries, and the variety is delicious.

To get a good harvest from a vineyard, you need to give it a decent part of your free time, because this culture loves regular maintenance. However, it often happens that healthy bushes in spring begin to take on a very sad look during the fruiting period - even large clusters gradually wither and dry out.

There can be many reasons why grape bunches dry, but the most common ones include:

• the defeat of the bushes by fungal diseases;
• care errors.

Diseases in which bunches dry

The most dangerous cause of drying out of grapes is diseases caused by fungi. Such lesions can lead to a massive loss of yield:

1. Mildew... Treat bushes with copper-containing preparations (Quadris, Ridomil Gold). For prophylaxis, seedlings must be placed spaciously and cut in a timely manner.
2. Anthractosis... It thrives on rainy and hot summer days. Spray grapes with copper sulfate, and two weeks later - with Previkur or Fundazol.
3. Verticellosis... There is no complete cure scheme yet, but to prevent the spread of the disease, it is necessary to treat the vineyard with fungicides (copper oxychloride, Fundazol, copper sulfate) once a month, while simultaneously introducing them into the soil. For prevention, you should properly distribute the load of the crop, avoid waterlogging and overfeeding with nitrogen.

Inaccuracies in care

The grapes can dry out even in the absence diseases... Often, wrong actions of gardeners lead to loss of yield, such as:

1. Overfilling... Although it is not recommended to water the shrubs during the ripening period, in hot and dry summers, a couple of buckets of water will help to avoid the reduction in the size of the berries and their subsequent drying out. The main thing is not to overdo it, especially during the rainy season, because high humidity also leads to similar consequences.
2. No load regulation... If the bush has formed many brushes, it is necessary to remove some of them, especially for young plants. Otherwise, the grapes simply do not have the strength to “pull out” the entire harvest and it will dry out.
3. Lack of support... A prerequisite for growing grapes is to create a support for the bush. If it is not there, then the ridges of the bunches can bend under the weight of the berries, and then the redistribution of nutrients and moisture throughout the brush is disrupted, as a result of which it dries out partially.

If the bush grows on the south side of the site, it is possible to get burns in clusters under the influence of direct sunlight. To avoid this situation, experienced gardeners do not completely remove stepchildren where brushes have formed on the vine, so that they protect them from the sun.

Video about grape diseases and their treatment