Grapevine cuttings

A friend of mine has a very nice old grapevine and I've asked her if I could take cuttings from it. I suppose autumn is the right time to do it but any advice would be very welcome. :D
Thanks, fiwi

 

Commercially they usually cut sections of stems..say an inch or so each side of a bud, then scratch the bark away a little the other side of the bud and peg it down into compost so its flat on the surface with the other side of the bud in contact with the soil...this usually throws roots down into the soil

But they are usually easy to root the normal way with tip cuttings or side shoots

 

Thanks Steve, I'll give it a try. Fiwi

 

Hi, I did it this way, Red grape with seeds, variety unknown.

Late spring when new growth was well under way I let a low level, blind (non flowering) shoot trail across the staging for about 2 feet. I then enlarged the hole in a 8" flowerpot, threaded the vine shoot up through it, added an inch or so of gravel to the bottom of the pot, filled it with compost, then added a support cane. I kept it well watered through the summer and about a month ago severed the new plant from the parent. It's growing away fine and I've pruned it back ready for autumn. I intend to keep it in the greenhouse (unheated) with the pot protected by a good load of dry straw and just keep it moist and no more. Once it comes out of dormancy next year it'll get planted outside on a sheltered south wall at a different location. The parent has taken everything a Scotish winter has thrown at it for over 80 years so I'm assuming it has some hardy genes in it and this is purely experimental to see if a vine can be grown outside this far North.

Effectively it's a method of air layering without the hassle (the idea came from an ancient gardening book about creating potted vines for novelty table decoration - aparantly if you use a runner with flower buds on you can also get growing bunches of grapes to form for the 'big house', how the other half used to live!)