planting grape vines

Hi sonnycbr,

I'm no expert but I think it sounds perfectly reasonable to do this but the main thing you will need to do is have enough sturdy support in the poly and greenhouse and to check them periodically in case the poly ones are threatening to burst through the poly plastic.

Other than preparing their beds well and keeping them moist I think they should do really well.  I know an old fella on my allotments who has a white grape in his greenhouse and he can't now get into it because it grew so big and has blocked the doorway!

yes  very strong supports, they get very heavy when fully loaded

If you can you might want to plant to root section outside of the polytunnely/green house and train it back in through the bottow as this means you dont have to worry less about the watering, but this obvioulsy depends on how your polytunnel and greenhouse were set up as to how easy difficult it is. With growing them indoors you will want to keep an eye on them for boytrisis, though this can lead to some very nice wine (see noble rot). Like others have mentioned make sure you have a good sturdy support and give some thought to future pruning and training.

Helps if you dig in plenty of good compost etc when planting to help give it a good start, apparantly in ye olde days people used to bury the corpse of a cow where they planted their grape vines. Also it is generally recommended not to let them form fruit for the first couple of years to encourage a decent root structure.

hope that is of some help.

You can dig a trench from outside the Polytunnel in to same and feed the root outside allowing it to tap into the water table the fruiting branches are then inside being protected from the vagaries of the UK weather.

stompy,   thats what i would have thought about the roots, however, i've not had that problem.
I have a hamburg one side of greenhouse and a champagne the other. I've changed the soil in there twice since i planted them but stayed 3ft away from them and only came across a few quite small roots that i replaced carefully.
I do remember reading that they are typically deep rooted and thought maybe they head outside to the cool.

Having said that, a friend, has a vine that sends a large root 12foot along his g;house only 3 ins down. When he changes his soil every 3yrs in the winter, when the vine is dormant, moves it away from were he will be planting tom's etc but its back in the middle of everything again come that summer.

Isn't it amazing how much stuuff varies from area to area and year to year