Category: Vineyard 2013

Each winter the vines will get pruned back to leave the right number of buds to produce the next season’s growth – and hopefully grapes.  I’m still a long way off this, and my current task is to create the structure on which the grapes will grow.  The first stage is to get one single stem to grow at least 6ft so that at the end of that season it can get bent down onto the lowest wire and become the first arm of this structure.  In the first year the vines have being putting most of their energy into producing roots, so didn’t get tall enough to make the grade, so, the only thing to do is cut them right back to two or three buds.  This year they should grow much more vigorously and by the end of the season will have reached the top pair of wires – fingers crossed.

While I was pruning them back, I thought I’d have a go at trying to propagate some more vines.  I’ve no idea what I will do with them if it works as I don’t have room for any more vines, but it’s just an experiment to see if it works.  Maybe I’ll give them away as Christmas presents!  So having trimmed the cuttings into lengths containing three buds then pushing them into the ground, I will leave them alone now to see what happens.

After what feels like the longest winter ever, and in fact the coldest March for 50 years (according to the Met Office), the weather has at last started to warm up.

The buds haven’t quite burst yet, but they are beginning to swell which means it won’t be long now. This is the time when the vines are most vunerable to frost damage, so I have covered them with shrub shelters again which I hope will protect them during those cold spring nights.  Last year the buds burst at the beginning of April so we’re about three weeks later this year, although I’m sure they will soon catch up and actually having a later start means a shorter time window for frost damage.

The vines are now growing well thanks to a few weeks of warm weather.  I’m still aiming to get one single shoot on each vine to grow up nice and strong, and get to the top wire (about 6ft).  Each of the vines now have a few buds that are shooting and so it is time to select the best one (one that is growing well, in a good position and growing vertically upwards).  All others can be removed to allow all the vine’s energy to go into one shoot.

Here are a couple of pictures (before and after) of one of the Orion vines:

They are not all at the same stage of growth and in fact there is quite a bit a variance between varieties.  The furthest ahead are probably the Phoenix and Solaris – but then that’s no real surprise since they have been in the ground a year longer than the others and so should already have established a good root system.

The slowest at the moment are the Regent, which are only just starting to show signs of budding.  The two pictures below are of a Phoenix and a Regent to show the comparison.  You have to look quite closely to see the buds breaking through on the Regent:

 

 

The vines are really growing well at the moment, and its looking like they will easily get to the height I need by the end of the season.  Even the new Orion vines are rocketing upwards.  In fact the growth is so vigourous I’m having to remove new buds and side shoots every few days.  It seems that as soon as my back is turned a new shoot has appeared.  The Regents are still growing very slowly though and are only a few inches tall – but this is better than nothing I suppose.

There’s not much else to do in the vineyard now until the end of the season apart from continuing to remove extra shoots, and when they reach the very top wires I will cut them at that point to let them continue putting any excess energy into root growth.

An Orion vine with side shoot to be removed

A very slow growing Regent

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.