Advice Needed: Replace vines or not?
Hey everyone, I find myself in an odd conundrum.
Last year I decided to try growing vines on my deck in containers. I sourced planters, ordered vines and then, because life goes like this sometimes, I couldn't get a component of the container medium in time. In fact I didn't end up getting it until late autumn. So I planted my vines in temporary 1-gallon starter pots and hoped life would smile on me soon. In the meantime I got anxious and made a couple mistakes, like pruning down to one bud instead of letting it do its thing. All summer these vines stayed in the 1-gal pots. Autumn came and I was able to get all of the soil mix components but didn't have time before frost to mix them up and get the vines in the full size planters.
When everything thawed I mixed the soil and transplanted the vines but it looked like they died, so I ordered new ones. Well, right when I get the new vines ready to go I see the old ones are actually budding, their budburst was just later than the other vines nearby I used for reference. Now I have these two new ones, don't have space for four vines, and my question is: should swap out the old and put in the new (since they haven't been subjected to a subpar growing season, and might be able to establish "optimally") or stick with the old ones because they're "established"?
According to the instructions that came with the vines, now that I've unpacked them and soaked them in water they should probably get planted this weekend, so I'm feeling some urgency to make this decision.
Thank you all, very much!