Three years ago I started out on this project, and now, finally I am seeing the fruits of my labour. So here is an update on the different varieties:
Although there are only three bunches of grapes on the Solaris, they are doing really well, in fact they are the best, partly due to the fact that they are an early variety so are ahead by a few weeks, but also they had they best weather during fruit set, so most of the grapes got fertilised:
The Phoenix are also doing well, they are behind the Solaris but that’s as expected being a later variety. Solaris are expected to be fully ripe sometime around the end of September, the Phoenix mid October and the Orion late October, so seeing the Solaris a few weeks ahead is no surprise. Fruit set on the Phoenix wasn’t quite so good as the Solaris, which I think may have been caused by the wet weather we had during the end of flowering. Most grapes are forming well, but there are quite a few small unfertilised berries:
The Orions have not done so well, there are quite a lot of unfertilised berries, which again I think was due to the wet weather during flowering. They were a couple of weeks behind the Phoenix so had to endure the rain for longer:
Here is a close up of one the Orion bunches. You can see a lot of unfertilised berries:
Still, there is not much I can do to control the weather, so I just have to wait and see how they turn out. I have removed some of the leaves around the grapes to give good airflow which should help prevent mildew, and to let sunlight get to the grapes. In about 6 weeks or so from now I could be creating my first batch of wine! The difficulty will be deciding when to harvest. I won’t have enough grapes to make three different batches, so will have to harvest together and combine them into one, but when they all ripen at different times it will be tricky deciding on the best time.