Grape vines among 'weed trees' suggests these vines are volunteers or wild. Leaf photos could tell.

Last season I severly pruned a Concord grape and built a new arbor for it. Grape vines are tough to kill off so you could remove the tree and build a trellis if it turns out to be a useful grape vine.

You can't kill a grape by cutting it back. Cut it at ground level and it will come back with a vengence. So in the unlikely case that it is a worthwhile fruit, you want to get rid of all that old growth. Then you can properly train one of the shoots that comes back into a manageable vine.

If you really want a good table grape forget this vine and plant a Jupiter. It will very likely be much superior in fruit quality.

I think you are lucky to have found something so very special. theaceofspades is correct. It's hard to kill a grapevine. It is probably a wild vine, and you might find out what you have if you ask your neighbors. If it has lived for so long, you can easily graft a vine of a flavor you want on to it (seedless or wine), and it's roots will give power to that new vine.

If you like it as it is, and want to keep it, when it loses it's leaves this winter, it will be dormant. This is the time to prune it. You will notice little nodes on it's canes aka branches. Those nodes are called buds, and will bring you grapes next year, so DO NOT CUT THEM ALL OFF, or you won't get grapes, but you can trim the whole vine down almost to the ground as long as you leave 2 or 4 canes with 14-16 nodes total, to give you grapes next year.

Those little buds hold magic. Inside each one is a shoot which will grow to a mighty cane, a lot of leaves, and flower clusters.

Take yourself over to You Tube, and search for pruning grape vines, and grafting and T-budding. You could spend hours there watching great videos that show you exactly in pictures what you need to do. And we all know a picture is worth a thousand words!

Let us know how this turns out!
Suzi

90% chance of being a low quality wild grape. This Fall you will know.

But to corroborate what others have posted: when I bought my house, I discovered some Concord grapes in a huge thicket. There were many, large, poor-fruiting grapes around the property. I macheted the thicket down while saving the grapes, then I decided I needed the grapes 10 ft to the left. I bent the vines and buried them in their final place, and next year I cut. The original vines took only a dozen mowings and several Roundup applications to die, but the newly rooted ones became good plants, good enough that the weight of their grapes collapsed the trellis last september. That's how tough they are. But don't do anything until Fall, it is most likely not worthy of cultivation.

I just want to add I grafted several seedless and muscat varieties onto that Concord vine. I had over 50% takes the first time. I e-mailed Lon Rombough and he gave me some expert grape grafting tips. I want to try grafting to this seasons green wood to see how many takes I get. I grafted to this seasons green pear wood alright. Later in the summer I will remove the tape to see how they have mended.

Thanks everyone. I used to grow roses, so I'm familiar with how to deal with plants that grow on canes. Finding the main part of the plant, will be the problem lol.

As for it being wild or not, I kind of doubt it. The house is in a small city, not a rural area. I have a very small yard, and the area it's in is near the garage, in a patch that obviously had been a garden of sorts at one time but was left to it's own devices. There's a pathetic sad rose under there, we found a garden bench under all the brush too. There were bulbs popping up once spring it in odd areas which led me to think someone had planted them purposely someplace nearby, maybe they got choked out of the original space but spread to the lawn where it is sunnier and they could survive. The man who lived there, had not actually been in the house for well over a year and it's evident that he had neglected the property for a very long time, house included.

Anyway, you all gave me very good advice and I'll take you up on it, and hopefully be able to save the plant(s). I really appreciate your help.

If you are going to take the trees out right away, you can cut those grapes down and they will survive. I wouldn't take them to the ground. If you leave a couple of feet of vine, that short a bit will be pretty easy to untangle.

If you aren't taking the trees down right away, leave the vines and see what they produce. Whether or not you like the grapes is going to make a difference in how you treat the vines.

It sounds to me like the first step is to get the ivy under control. The trees might possibly be something to save. You won't know until you get them unburied and determine what they are and give them some pruning and care.

Who knows, maybe those are fruit trees.

I wouldn't automatically assume that grapes in a once cultivated garden gone out of control would be wild grapes. They could very easily have been deliberately planted back in the days when the garden was tended.

I bought a place that had been abandoned for 6 years. The surviving plants were in bad shape, but I babied them just to see what I had. They looked like garbage, but some time in the past, someone was a pretty good gardener and most of the plants turned out to be excellent. It took some serious work to bring them back, but it was worth it.

2 completely "dead" bushes turned out to be gorgeous hardy hibiscus that have flowers for 6 months solid. 3 "dead" fruit trees are bearing fruit for me. An unidentifiable tangled mess of dead twigs is now a sweet-smelling honeysuckle.

Clean up first, then stand back and take stock.