Lessons in depth-of-field

I must have dozens of pictures of these dried grape vine tendrils and naked grape bunches in my archives. Most of them were not successful, but a few of them were. The problem I have is that I'm often taking these pictures during the winter (in summer the tendrils are hidden behind new growth and leaves) in the morning or late afternoon when the light is not bright. And I'm holding the camera, not using a tripod.

Most of the subject in this image is in sharp focus. I was lucky.

That means that I have to use a fast shutter and wider aperture to get an image without motion blur. And that results in a paper-thin depth-of-field (DOF). If I'm lucky, most of the image will be sharp. More often than not, half of the image is beyond the DOF and comes out blurred. Here's an example:

The parts of the dried grape bunch that are closer to me than to the stem are out of focus.

To get all of the bunch in the shot above sharp, I would need to use my tripod so I could close down the aperture to increase the DOF and take a longer exposure. Or, I could just take the picture when the sun is shining.