Hello! The previous owners of my home planted a grapevine too close to the fence and now the fence is getting pushed over and out of whack as the trunk increases in size. (Forgive me for any gardening terms I get wrong, please, I am not so good with plants.)
My question is how to remedy this? I can't move my fence over by the few inches that the grapevine requires. I want to save it...it makes for such a pretty area, spanning the length of one side of my house. But I also need a functioning gate and a straight fence. Can I slice off some of the trunk, vertically, without wounding the plant too much? Other ideas? Thank you for any help you can give.
- applestar
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I don't know if cutting the trunk of the vine is a good idea. I would be more inclined to cut the fence just enough to provide sufficient breathing room since it's a wooden one. I imagine it would need to be sawed manually with a precision tool or even chiseled out -- maybe start with a series of carefully power drilled holes -- or you could easily injure the plant.
I totally agree with Applestar on this. When I first moved into my current house, there was a 6 ft. tall wooden fence around the back yard. My neighbor on one side had a very large pecan tree that was pushing against the fence and forcing it to bow toward my property. I simply removed any boards that were pressed against the trunk, relocated the runners the fence boards were secured to and moved them up a bit on their respective poles to clear the trunk by a few inches and then sawed off the fence boards to fit around the tree trunk. The end result was my fence was now straight and I could see a portion of the trunk that was now exposed on my side of the fence.
Then Hurricane Katrina came along and blew the tree down-----right on top on about 40 ft. of fence that had to be replaced once again. Now I have a straight fence and no tree to worry about-------but also no pecans, and that sucks.
Then Hurricane Katrina came along and blew the tree down-----right on top on about 40 ft. of fence that had to be replaced once again. Now I have a straight fence and no tree to worry about-------but also no pecans, and that sucks.