Himrod Grape Vine - Where did the Grapes Go?

I planted a Himrod Grape vine close to our front porch back in 2012 as shown in this thread:
http://davesgarden.com/community/forums/t/1274136/

It is really thriving this year, it is huge probably 20 feet long.
Just this July 5, I posted there that there were lots of grapes, probably over 100 on the vine. They were about the size of a large pea. I didn't pay much attention to them, but now they are nearly all gone. Wondering what happened. I don't see a lot of birds there, but I'm not here all day to check.
Deer?
Birds?
There are two bunches left up fairly high on the vine.

I suppose that you could say that I pruned it about mid July since it was growing so much I thought that it was too much and it would help. Did I shock it or something? I just read that it should be pruned when it is dormant.

I don't see any grapes on the ground so it don't think they just dropped.


This message was edited Aug 4, 2015 2:56 PM

Birds love them, that would be my first guess.
Deer are a possibility but would have eaten some leaves, too, not just picked grapes.
I am not sure about Zone 7, but here we prune grapes after they break dormancy, when the leaves are large buds. If we prune while dormant, we get too much die back at the pruning cut.

I didn't know that birds love them so much. I think I'm going to move it to the back yard and just give up on them for ourselves since I don't have the energy to put up netting or whatever.
Thanks for the help.

Grapes are easy from cuttings. In the spring they need pruned back hard, which provides a lot of cuttings. I had Kindergartners just jam 30 into the ground and had 6 growing a year later. You could improve that rate by dipping the cutting in rooting hormone and making sure the soil around the cutting was a light porous mix that is easy to root into.
In other words, you don't have to transplant your one single plant to one single new location. You could leave it where it is and try it a half dozen other locations, too.

Thanks very much for the tips. It is just growing like crazy and I cut a few more vines off and planted 8 cuttings way back in the back yard where I happen to have drip watering. Probably the worst time to do it but I just had to cut it back.

This message was edited Aug 6, 2015 5:54 PM

The birds get most of my muscadine ever year.

I have had a problem with Morning Doves nesting right by a shrub by my front door. At first I thought it was cute, then they kept multiplying and seeming to think that my front porch was their turf. I knocked down the nest last season before they layed eggs and have tried to scare them away, put up a fake owl, etc. This was all before the grape vine ever made grapes. Now, on a daily basis I hardly ever see them around. But one morning I went out very early, maybe 6:30 and there was a flock of them, maybe 6, right by the grape vine.

They seem to have adapted to the time when I don't bother them - are they that smart?

Try setting a large fake snake around your vine or porch and see if that works.