Yeshwant, I don' t think you can grow any no-spray grape 15' from a grape badly infected with black rot (brown rot is for stone fruit, black rot is the grape disease). You may try talking to your neighbor, offering to cut it down for him. If you want to grow grapes with his grapes there, you will need to spray, and you may even want to see if you can talk him into letting you spray his grapes since their diseases are going to make your vines much more disease-suceptible.

For low-spray, Jupiter and Alwood are both good. They are also good in terms of resistance to black rot, which may be the most important thing for you if you have that major host nearby. I really have no idea how much you are going to have to work to grow grapes with such a big source of the disease nearby, it could be throwing millions of spores per day on your vines and making it nearly impossible whatever you do, or maybe it will be perfectly possible with just a couple sprays per year.

Scott

Thanks Scott!
We're not great friends with this neighbor, or we wouldn't have this problem to start with. He tends to have a history of being a know-it-all and quite self-centred. His vine is huge with loads of vegetative growth and straddles our entire fence functioning as a privacy screen which I am grateful for.
But, I will see what I can do. I think he would be thrilled to have edible grapes at last (I think the variety may be a Concord: has slip-skin and seeds), since every year he takes great pride in telling people about the huge harvest he is going to have when the grapes are green, only to have the grapes dry up and shrivel with, thanks for correcting me, Black Rot. Maybe I will hand him a Fact sheet on it.
I wonder if spraying the side of the vine accessible to us would help.
Any good sources for the grapes you mentioned?
And what would be a good spray regimen? The houses are attached, so we cannot have anything really toxic or that would be spread significantly into adjacent backyards. Although, in this case, it might be a good thing to have it do that.

Yeshwant.

Yeshwant, Double A is a very good source for grapes; they used to sell out fast so order early. For sprays its hard to say for sure but from what I know about your spot I would start with 3-4 disease sprays per year. I use copper since it is organic (not non-toxic, but better than most things). Spray at say 1' shoot length, right before blooms come out, and right after they fade (bloom is when black rot gets into the grapes). Plus maybe one more spray 3 or so weeks after that. If you wanted to try with less, just do one right before and one right after bloom and see how that works. I am growing vinafera grapes which need more sprays so I am not as experienced with lower spray levels, and also I can't estimate how much of a problem your neighbors vine will cause for you.

Scott

I hope he never sprays his vine with 2,4-D - as it is deadly to grapes, even in small amounts. :)

His fruit likely are infested with mildew due to lack of air circulation associated with lack of pruning.

Jupiter should not be affected by his spores. I once had mildewy grapes, but they did not affect my Jupiter!

Hi,yeshwant91-You do need the most desese resistant grape in your situation.
Alwood is very good.Mars,Concord, and Steuben are growing organic(no spray) on my chainlink fence,and are full of healthy grapes as we speak ( can provide Picture).
Check my Web Page to see my collection of grapes i selected during the 15 years in New Jersey.
I Have a deasese resistant Concord now and is performing very well.
I had another Concord years ago and it was a disaster.
So,even if they look the same there are more than one strain of Concord.
Here is the Web site Address to the page naming what i grow.
Good luck
http://figs-and-grapes4backyard.com/

Plumfan, would mildew make the fruit shrivel and turn black?
Herman2. Thanks! I think Alwood, Mars or Jupiter would be my choices.
I am also thinking of spraying the vine that is on our side of the fence. Maybe we can get our grapes that way, instead of planting our own vine :-)

Yeshwant,

It appears that you and Scott are talking about blackrot, something I have not seen on the west coast. All my grape ever got was mildew, so I took it out.

Maybe if your neighbor read the fact sheet below, he would be agreeable to removing his vine, and installing a much better grape? You could make a rooted cutting off your plant and give it to him, costing you nothing really.

I would advise you to check with several good quality local nurseries, (or the county/state ag service, but maybe they have no such options in NYC!) to see what all other kinds of grapes are resistant to disease in your area. See if Reliance is one of them. It sure is a good tasting grape and never fails to yield a ton of fruit for me. Comes from the same breeding program as Jupiter, in Arkansas.

If you feel real adventurous, you could start grafting his vine over to a good grape, starting now, and eventually make use of his entire underground root system, which is a shame to waste. But it takes diligence to convert a vine over. I know, I have done it.

You would need to cut a vertical slit in the mother vine (his) and insert a sharpened piece of current season's grape cutting. Bind up and seal the wound etc to keep air and water out. It would have a good chance of growing out next spring. Once that occurs, you can start chopping back the upper portion of the plant that is useless until all you have left is the desirable scion growing from the old stump.

Here is a link that might be useful: fact sheet on blackrot