Finished Trellis

As I look back at my previous posts and remember what my grapes look like right now, it is crazy what 10 days will do. I just finished putting the last wire on the trellis and this job is finally DONE! Just in time also. I would have been in trouble if I had not put in the posts and wires when I did, because the vines have grown so fast in this hot weather that they would have started to break off or get damaged from their weight just being on the strings. So a note to all those out there that might be planning to start a vineyard (Sam!), get your trellis built during the first year and don't wait for the second year to do it. It could get away from you and put you behind a year.

Some of my vines are overlapping each other now, which means that each of them are over 6 feet long. So my goal for the year of getting cordons grown out, even after cutting them all the way back to the ground, has been accomplished. Not all of the plants will get to this point, but 4 Marquette's in a row are this big already. I have high hopes for others as well. I am thinking that I will get some good production next year from some of them, and the following year (4th) will be great! A couple of my new plants from 2010 are doing really good, so they will be right on schedule. But everything will be growing good roots so if I do not prune everything back so hard next spring, they should be on schedule also.

I just posted on my Facebook page that I love doing art. Growing a vineyard is art because the plants are trained in such a way that they are fulfilling what I have thought they should look like for 2 years now. My trellis is better than what I thought it would be like, the plants are doing better than I expected at this point, I get to play with them each day and train them in the way they should go, that they have to be art. My latest idea is to paint my own custom wine bottle label with acrylic paints so I do not have to resort to using pre-made labels. It will cost a lot more in the long run, but I think it will be much more satisfying. I can't wait to start on it, but I have a lot of other projects to finish first.

I was reading John 15 in the Bible where J-sus is talking about how He is the true vine and we are the branches. There is a lot of spiritual significance to growing a vineyard. I would like to do a whole study on it and write up an hour's worth of teaching on it for a Sunday School lesson someday, that would be a blast! It is interesting that out of the 66 books in the Bible, only 1 does NOT have something about either wine, grapes, or vineyards, etc. It was pretty important to Israel to have references to these in nearly the whole Bible. It must be important for us today as well. That will have to be what I research and study.

Wires are up

It has been really busy lately. I got 5/6 of my wires up this last weekend and trained all my vines onto the wires and off of the strings. I still have 1 post to put in, but it has been raining and I need it to dry out before I can do it. Otherwise, the clay soil will dry up and pull away from the post. But with the 2 upper wires in, I bought myself some time. I planned it so I could just loosen the wires, dig and plant the post, and then just set the to 2 wire onto the top of the crosspiece near the screw eye, and use small gauge wire to connect the wires onto the screw eyes. Then, next spring after I prune, I can take the wire off the tightener and string it through the screw eyes and re-tighten it with a new crimp. I wound extra wire on the tightener so I could do this already.

After training the vines onto the wires, I pruned off all the growing points except the canes I wanted to grow longer. I tried this earlier this year on younger plants and it made a big difference in both leaf size and quality, and enabled the vines to grow longer. I think in a couple weeks it will bounce back and look great! Right now, it looks a little sparce, and not as filled in because I trained the vines to grow onto the wires where there was open space, not just so it would fill in and look full from the deck.

I am training 2 trunks up on each plant, and then splitting each one on the upper wire. Because of our potentially harsh climate in winter, if one dies off, hopefully there will be one left. This will take a little more management on my part, but that is the fun of it! It doesn't seem like work to be out there, just fun. Next year, this should fill in really nice and be even throughout the trellis.

I am finding out that my plan to grow vines on my chain link fence might not be the greatest idea. I have been noticing that if a leaf sticks out through the fence into the "woods" behind my yard, it gets eaten by deer, now that I know what to look for (from a previous post). So if I let them continue to grow on the fence, I think that anything that sticks out will get eaten, even my grapes! This is not acceptable. Therefore, I think I am going to have to install posts in my yard, maybe a couple feet from the fence, and use a 4 cane kniffen system to grow them on. I can get them a little higher by doing this also and make more of a wall of foliage. This should protect my vines and grapes once they develop, and keep the deer away at the same time. Now I just have to make sure that the 2 gates to the yard stay closed.

It is interesting that of all my new vines I bought this spring, how different their growth is from their location in the yard. The Frontinac Gris is kind of a slow grower and less vigorous than the Marquette. But the 2 Marquette I have growing in 5 gallon buckets so I can transplant them next year by the front door, are kind of stagnant. They had a burst of growth early on, then their leaves have turned a little yellow instead of dark green like the other plants. I hope they just stay alive until I can transplant them next spring, then I think they will grow great.

I have a guy at work that is willing to give me all the old cedar deck wood that he ripped off his deck because he is replacing it with new treated wood. I think I will use this to make the arbor out front if it is good enough, so I can get the Marquette growing out there next year. This is a great way to get good wood (cedar) to build it with. I really did not know how I could afford to buy cedar to do this project, but now I do! Praise G-d for His provision!

Building trellis - continued...

Today was a long day. I hired a teenager from church to come and work in my vineyard to fill in the post hole that were dug a few days ago. He did an EXCELLENT job! Four teens helped dig the holes on Monday morning, Tuesday we set the posts and cemented the bottom of the anchor posts in using 1 bag of cement per post, and we filled them in today. Wednesday I took pictures of the progress and trained my vines to run down the wires (strings for now) so they could grow out and get longer without just growing up.

The vines seem to be responding to the pruning at the bases and cutting off all the growing points up the stem except for the terminal ends and 2-3 nodes down from there (so I can split them). This also looks better than having the deer damage from the last post.

I am just excited to see how they are progressing so quickly, after being pruned back to basically the ground this spring. I am getting really close to having the trellis done and vines training on the wires. There is only one more middle post to put in, then all I have to do (all I have to do - yea, right) is run the wires and train the vines onto the wires and off the temporary strings.

Leaf damage to my grapes and garden

There has been a lot going on in my vineyard the last week or two. I haven't had time to write anything, but I have taken photos. The first thing to blog about is damage to my plants. I discovered one morning, as I was taking my morning stroll and inspection through all my plants, that I had 6-7 plants that were half defoliated! I almost freeked out! So I started inspecting everthing again real close because I thought it was armyworms that have been in the area lately. There was damage on 6 plants in one row, the top of my bean plants had leaves eaten off in my 2 foot fenced in garden, and 1 Marquette grape plant on the other side of the yard. But I couldn't figure it out because only the middle leaves were gone. The tops were still there, the bottom leaves were still there, and the middle ones were nearly all gone.

So I decided to spray insecticide (Pyrethrin) on all my grapes and garden to combat the caterpillars. So I started spraying everything, and when I was on my last 2 plants, I noticed a deer track in the mud next to my grapes that were eaten. NOW, I know what happened. My gate to the woods through our chain link fence had been left open overnight, and a deer had come into the yard and decided to have a midnight snack of my grape leaves! It was a young doe because there were 2 tracks overlapping each other, and the tips were sharply pointed. I know this because I am a deer hunter. I followed the tracks through my garden, through the woods where it came into my yard, and where it left the yard. I got about 15 pictures of the tracks and damage to my leaves.

After a couple days, I decided to prune back the damaged stems. After a couple more days of ugly looking plants, I pruned off all the growing points except at the top of the plants so they would grow longer and not have so many suckers on them. Now it looks real nice and is starting to look like a real vineyard.

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.