From what usually are fast-growing wild grape vines in my yard last year came a cluster of fruit that were different than grapes, furry, and coloured pink on and yellow/green on the other. Almost like a small peach ??
Colour didn’t come out so well in the pics, it looked pretty vibrant and really quite weird in real life. Any ideas ?
Hello Thank you for contacting Toronto Master Gardeners.
The picture you sent is not of a small fruit. The fuzzy clusters on the grape vine are galls from some form of midge, a small flying insect. Midges lay their eggs in the stem of the grape. The site grows into a small gall or ball that houses the egg and provides food for it to eat when it hatches. Different midges have different looking galls and some midges will also lay their eggs in leaves so the growth will appear on the leaves. From the picture I am not able to firmly identify exactly which midge you have on your vines. but I think it maybe grape filbert galls, Schizomyia coryloides.
There are no effective treatments for these galls other than removing them by hand. This will help decrease the population of midges going forward. According to the literature the galls do not have much of an effect on the vines unless there is long term infestation which may have an effect on growth as the gall can steal some of the nutrients. Trying to control them with chemicals would be difficult as the timing would have to be very precise to affect the eggs.
I am including some links below for you to read further about grape vine galls.
Photos to help identify the gall: https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/472008-Schizomyia-coryloides/browse_photos
General information on galls: https://www.extension.umn.edu/garden/insects/find/insect-and-mite-galls/