Hot, hot, hot!

Only a few posts ago I mentioned that we had just had the coldest March in 50 years. Last week we had the hottest day in 7 years. In fact we appear to be in the middle of a heatwave which has so far lasted about 3 weeks and doesn’t seem to be showing any signs of cooling off. Up until a few days ago we hadn’t had any rain for a few weeks either, and unfortunately I hadn’t been watering the vines (I thought they were doing fine) and one of the Regents completely shrivelled up and died.
The other Regent is ok, well I say ok but is still only a few inches tall compared to the 5-6ft of the Orions planted at the same time. So I can’t work out if it was just a duff couple of vines or they don’t like the conditions. The first thing I did was give all the vines a good soaking! Then I decided I would just replace the dead one with one bought online from the RHS (so it must be good!) and see how that goes.
I wouldn’t normally plant until winter but I was keen to get something in the ground as soon as possible. It arrived within a week and looked very healthy, was a couple of feet tall and even had two bunches of grapes on. It seemed criminal to cut them off but I’m sure it’s the best thing for the vine not to be wasting any energy on fruit when it needs to be producing strong roots.

The other vines are still doing really well – all but one have now reached the top wires, and a couple are over 7ft tall.

The one that hasn’t reached the top is one of the Solaris vines, which has always been the weakest one, and seems to have become home to a few bugs. I’m not sure what they are but they have had a good munch as you can see.