Category: Vineyard 2012

Having decided on giving a red grape variety a try and doing various searches on the internet I thought Regent would be a good one to go for.

Today I got an email from Jack at Vines for Wines saying that although there are no grafted Orion vines available he does have a few 2/3 year old own root Orions in stock. If I were growing hundreds of vines I might not want to risk using own root vines for fear of phylloxera, but as I only want three I will take this risk.

I almost feel disappointed now that I won’t be growing a red grape, but having wanted to grow Orion from the start I’m going to order three of these.

They should be delivered mid November.

September/October is normally the busiest time of year for a vineyard in the UK.  This is the time when the grapes that have been lovingly nurtured all year are harvested, crushed, pressed and made into wine.

I am at least 2 years away from all this excitement so for now I can just sit back and relax, and maybe take the odd photo of a vine soaking up the autumn sun.

The ground is now fully prepared for the third row of vines.  As with the other two rows I removed the top few inches of soil so I could cover with a layer of stones, but this time made the trench a bit wider so it will make mowing easier without damaging the vines.  While I was preparing the area I decided I would try squeezing in another couple of vines between the rows against the fence.  It is not ideal in that the sun will only get to one side of the vines, but they will at least be facing South.  This also gives me the chance to grow some Regent vines after all.

I have put in a layer of weed control fabric which should help reduce weeds between the vines while still allowing water to pass through to the soil below.  The rest of the stones will be added after the vines have been planted.

This view shows the ‘extra row’ against the fence where I will put in two Regent vines.

I have just received confirmation that the vines have been dispatched, so all being well they should arrive in the next day or two and I can get them in the ground before Christmas.  I just hope there are no delays in the post being so close to Christmas, as I don’t think they would cope too well with being stuck in a sorting office for a week!

I was expecting them to arrive sometime in November, but with a later than average arrival of the first hard frost and subsequent cold weather it has taken the vines longer to go into dormancy, which is the best time to transplant them.

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