Budding Cuttings

I am quite excited about some cuttings I made this spring after I pruned my vines. I ended up with 4 of them sprouting and so far, not dying. My nicest one is the Concord. Then I got 3 more of different varieties. I just saved a 3 bud section, and jammed them in the ground on a wet, rainy day into the mud and let them go. I did not have very much success, but maybe 20% worked. As usual, I will document these through the year.

Father's Day

Growth has been quite fast this week, even with moderate temperatures in the 70's and rain. My grape cluster has finished flowering and the grapes are starting to swell. The first picture was taken 6-18-10, and the second one was taken today on 6-21-10. I am glad to have pictures to document this process because I have been a little delinquent on filling out my notebook with this info. I guess I will just use these posts to fill in the blanks.

M10-10 has really started to shoot upward, so that I can't hardly recognize the wood cutting that I planted. All of my other new cuttings are growing very well and have outgrown the Pyrethrin insecticide injury that I gave them.

I have 7 plants at or above the 5 1/2 foot wire already. LC03-09, LC04-09, M01-09, M05 thru 08-09 have all hit the wire. They have grown over a foot in the last 5 days according to my last post.

I almost finished the first crosspiece for my end posts and I hung it up just to look at it and it looks really nice. I won't put them up for good until I get 4 done, one for each end post, so I can line them all up and get them all straight and level. I will have to trim the top off one of the end posts, maybe, in order to get all the wires to line up parallel with each other. Only then will I drill my holes through the end posts and bolt the pieces on with 1/2 x 8 inch galvanized bolts with washers and lock washers.

It is interesting that the large cuttings that I planted are budding already and growing the shoots that I left on. This is most likely using up the reserves in the stem instead of growing roots. It will be an interesting research project to see what happens with them.

Grape cluster started to flower

It is so exciting! The only remaining cluster of grapes in all my vineyard started to flower today! It finally stopped raining and had some sun out so I could take some photos.

Two of my plants hit the 5 1/2 foot wire today officially. One of them had been pruned off down to the ground, so the growth has been crazy. I am glad I have my angled end posts put in because I am going to need to string a wire on them soon so I can train them properly.

I had wondered how the plants would respond to pruning off some of the bottom growth that was making it very thick near the ground. After I did, in just a week or so, the top growth has been excellent! All the leaves got bigger and it grew taller without any problems. So I can recommend that doing this is a good thing. Plus there is better air circulation and less chance of disease on the lower parts of the plant.

It is interesting that the new wild grape cuttings I planted from 1 inch stems have seeped a lot of thick, gooey, very sticky sap that clings like jello out the end of the stem. Some of them had a small leaf or two left on them and they are all doing good and haven't wilted at all.

Wild grape cuttings

I have a couple really big wild grape vines out behind my house so I thought I would try to see if I can get cuttings from them. We want some kind of ivy or vine to grow up and cover an arbor I want to build over the deck maybe in 2 years. So I thought, lets get something growing now so it is ready to transplant in a year or two.

So I cut some 1 inch x 12 inch long sections of the vine that had swelled buds on it and I want to see if they will sprout and grow roots. I figure, there is a lot of mass and energy stored in the stem, and there are active buds on the outside, so lets plant them!

I put 5 in a 6 gallon pail of dirt, and 6 more in the garden area between 2 of my wine grape plants. If nothing happens, I am not out anything. But if they sprout and grow, they will be hardy enough to grow very fast here and maybe I will use them to grow over the new arbor.

I also may try to grow some ivy vines from seeds that I picked off of a wall of ivy on the side of a building. I will do these inside in the front window in a multi cell growing tray. But I still think there is a better ivy/vine that might be nice to grow over the deck.

Planting a new Concord grape

Today I planted a new Concord grape plant that I bought at Home Depot last night. It had a lot of top growth and 6 clusters of developing grapes already. It was only in a 8 inch pot so I figured it would be really root bound. Boy was I right. It was really only roots and mulch with a little handful of dirt. So I had to prune back the top growth to only 2 stems, and cut off all the grape clusters.

Trying to untangle the root system was crazy. The only way I could do it was to wash off all the "dirt" with a powerful garden hose nozzle. This took almost an hour to do and to pull the roots apart. I finally got most of it apart and some of them were almost 2 feet long. So I dug a large hole next to my arbor and planted all of it and made sure to spread the roots out as far as possible. I did uproot 7 Concord cuttings that I planted 2 months ago, and none of them were doing anything. So now this plant should grow well and grow up the arbor this summer.

I did get 3 good, but thin, hardwood cuttings from this Concord plant. I planted them in pots and have them sitting in my garden next to my other grapes. I think they should grow so we will see in a couple months what happens to them.

Trellis Construction

I now have all 4 end posts put in, and I made a pattern for the cross pieces for the geneva double curtain training system that I am going to use.

All of my posts are going to be 6 inches around. They are treated cedar at 8 foot lengths. I will use treated 2x6's for all the cross pieces, and the anchor posts will be 4 foot long, 6 inch posts that will stick out about 1 foot so I can attach the 12.5 gauge high tensile wire to.

I will attach the cross pieces with 1/2 inch bolts with washers and lock washers, 2 bolts for each piece. This should be adequate to prevent twisting. If twisting becomes a problem, I will buy metal supports to put under them.

I plan on using 1 3/4 inch staples for everything. I will have pictures for this later. OR...I just thought to buy heavy screw eyes and run all wires through them. We will see what I choose to use later on.

I plan on drilling holes through the 6 inch posts for the first wire that will be at about 5 feet, and running the HT wire through electric fence insulation so it does not cut into the wood post. I will attach the green plastic stakes to this 5 foot wire and tie them on so there will be no need for a lower wire. This way I can easily walk under the wire and between the plants to manage them without having to walk down to the end of the row each time.

I will only have 3 wires total, so it will be cheaper, easier to manage, and cleaner looking. All this will be posted as the summer goes on. I just have to get the money, and pick away at it little by little. It is great though to have the kids and my wife help me get this all done, I think it will look really pretty when it is finished. It already does to me.

Putting Posts In

I haven't been on lately, it has been busy and I was waiting for something relevant to say. I finally got to tasted Marquette wine that I had out at Salem Glen Vineyard and Winery in Rochester, MN last weekend. It was pretty dry, but tasted good. I guess I will have to grow to love it. But by the time I make it for myself, I do not think that will be a problem. I liked about half of the wines they make out there, but most of them were fry, and I guess I prefer a little sweetness right now. That may change over time but it is a start. I did buy a bottle of it to go along with the bottle of Frontinac Gris that I got from Falconer Vineyard in Red Wing, MN. I will save these for some special occasion.

I now have 4 of my end posts put in. One is left to go along with the 4 anchor posts, and 2 in-between posts. I broke down and paid my son and wife $10 a post to help me, this way they will get in before summer's end.

My 3 younger kids helped weed my grapes which was a big help, plus they made a little money doing it. It is amazing what you can accomplish for CASH! So I got 2 small kids hoes so they fit them better and they can call them their own, hopefully it will encourage them to use them.

I have massive growth on Marquette M05-09 and 3 other Marquette's, so much that I tried to get the chicken wire cage off them to put a new, larger one on, and it did not come off. The roots have grown through the lower holes and it is stuck. So if you use chicken wire cages, that really do work well instead of grow tubes, keep them loose and on top of the ground so this does not happen.

My new plants from this year are growing great! I have a picture of M10-10, and the grape cluster from M01-09. I think I will prune some of the sucker shoots off M05-09 to help stimulate top growth of the 2 main stems. It has a good root system from last year so I think this may work. The Frontinac Gris has recovered from its Pyrethrin leaf injury now and looks good. My Concord has one shoot that is growing very fast, but there are hardly any other buds that are popping and doing anything more than 12 inches off the ground. Maybe the buds got winter injury. I might have to lay them down over the winter and see if that helps.

I think I will prune some of the sucker shoots off M05-09 to help stimulate top growth of the 2 main stems. It has a good root system from last year so I think this may work.