Question: What are the benefits of using grow tubes?

Answer: Grow tubes offer grape growers several time- and money-saving benefits*:

1) Faster establishment of balanced, healthy vines - Grow tubes - good quality, large diameter grow tubes - accelerate the growth of both stems and roots, resulting in an increase of total vine biomass. This means:

• Your first commercial crop - the first 'black ink' entry you get to make in your ledger - comes sooner
• The period of time needed to ramp up to mature crop levels is reduced

2) Protection from herbicide spray makes weed control - the biggest challenge to Midwestern and Eastern grape growers - faster, easier, and more effective - No searching for vines amidst the weeds, no herbicide or mechanical cultivator damage to vines. For commercial growers, grow tubes dramatically reduce labor costs. For hobby growers with a limited number of man-hours to devote vineyard maintenance, grow tubes are indispensable.

3) Reduced vine training costs - Grow tubes automatically train vines to grow upward toward the cordon wire, saving several trips through the field to train vines. Again, this reduces labor costs for commercial growers and allows hobby growers to use their limited time for more productive activities - like weed control!

4) Protection from animal predation - Grow tubes protect newly planted vines from deer, rabbits and other rodents.

5) Increased vine survival under windy or drought conditions - Grow tubes - good quality, large-diameter grow tubes - reduce the moisture stress on newly planted vines, resulting in very high survival rates. This dramatically reduces the number of replants necessary. Replants are extremely expensive because their care and maintenance needs (weed control, training, spraying, etc.) are out of sync with the rest of the vineyard, and of course replants reduce the productivity of the vineyard until all vines reach maturity.

* These benefits result only from the use of large-diameter, high quality grow tubes.