The new vines arrived the day after they were dispatched. Unfortunately it took me two days to find the ‘missed delivery’ card the postman put through our letterbox, as it had somehow managed to end up underneath my daughter’s buggy. I picked up the vines from the sorting office and got them straight into a large bucket of water to rehydrate them. The roots had dried out a little which is supposedly not good, so I’ll just have to wait and see if it has had any adverse effect.
The next morning I planted them out. This involved peeling back the weed suppressing fabric, then digging a hole large enough for the roots and deep enough to bury them about six inches. To help the root system develop I sprinkled some mycorrhizal fungi around the roots:
I then back filled the hole, and replaced the fabric:
Once all five vines had been planted I filled the trenches with 20mm gravel and watered them in well:
The vineyard now consists of 11 vines:
3 x Solaris, 3 x Phoenix, 3 x Orion and 2 x Regent