Grapes and Vermicompost

Growing grapes has been one of my recent new things. We had a good harvest last year, somewhat surprising since I have been blundering along in terms of pruning, one of the essentials of grape growing.
This year I am trying to observe how they grow so that I have a better idea of what to do at the end of next winter (and also during the year as the grapes vines spread all over the trellis).
At the end of winter I cut back last year's growth leaving about four buds on each of the many spurs and removing the rest. What I noticed yesterday (May 20th) was that each bud has grown out to about 4 "nodes", although I assume they will continue growing longer. At each node (except the first one) there is a leaf and opposite the leaf is what I expect will become the bunch of grapes. This projection has short side branches with little blobs at the end of each. In the axil of the leaf is another small (currently, at least) leaf. This photo is typical. The grapes are closest to the camera and the large leaf, with the little leaf in its axil, is on the opposite side of the vine.
The first node of the vine (and sometimes more) does not have the bunch of grapes branch, but just the leaf with a little leaf in the axil.

We started a new bed of raspberries three years ago and although all three new plants were supposed to be the same it became obvious that one was different. It had thorns and did not develop raspberries in July when the other two did. I began cutting it as if it were an early fruiting variety. It produced early raspberries last year and it is now (May 20th) beginning to flower while the others are still growing taller. In terms of pruning I have always cut our raspberries to the ground in the fall. But the early fruiting one produces berries on the previous year's growth, so that one is cut back to about three feet and berries are produced on the new growth off those three foot stems.

For years we have had composting worms in bins in our cellar from which I periodically harvest vermicompost. This ends up somewhere in the vegetable garden but I have never kept records of what effect, if any, it has on our vegetable production. It is supposed to be very nutritious for plants.
This year I mixed some of the vermicompost with compost from the OCRRA site and applied it to part of the pepper bed. In this photo there are twelve plants of three different pepper varieties. From the right of the photo they are garden sunshine, bullnose, and pepper king. Somewhat unscientifically I applied the vermicompost to the right side of the  bed so that all of the garden sunshine and six of the bullnose plants are affected. But all of the pepper kings and half of the bullnose just have regular OCRRA compost. The pepper kings are also spaced a little bit farther apart than the others. Later I will try to determine whether there is any difference in the growth or production of the plants. [This photo is taken looking west.]

It's a New Season

Nothing posted since November, but that happens in the winter.
The winter was not much of a winter and one of the results was that vegetables (like kale) that might overwinter didn't survive. Without a good snow cover they were subject to cold drying winds and freezing temperatures.
But I haven't been totally idle. Beyond making plans for what to grow this year I began starting seeds back on March 5th and 15th. Here are some of them out for a little "hardening off" before being planted.

The purpose of the screens (one was removed for the photograph) is to keep off cabbage white butterflies and their progeny - one of my nemeses last season.

Seeds are starting in the cellar, under lights, but there is other activity out in the garden. I did have some lettuce and a very small amount of spinach in cold frames. We have eaten two meals using lettuce so far. Most of my leeks and scallions survived the winter and we will be using some of them soon. The garlic is coming along nicely.

With the perennials, there are signs of rhubarb and some raspberries starting. The other day, while on my hands and knees pulling weeds (which survived the winter very well), I noticed the beginnings of asparagus. Now they will wait until we get some warm weather at which time they will shoot up. This is their 3rd year so we should get a few weeks of picking. Last year we only picked from May 2nd to May 8th for a total of 1 1/2 to 2 pounds.

Other early season activities included pruning the Concord grapes (I'm hopeful I did it right) and restoring fencing around part of the vegetable garden with the hope of keeping any neighborhood groundhogs away from the things they especially like.

The garden at the end of the year

Not much is left in the garden. Quite a few leeks, a few scallions, next year's garlic, and some lettuce.
I tried something new this year with lettuce, which was to scatter lettuce seed inside the frame, which I did on October 12th. When the nights started approaching freezing I added the glass cover.
Today is November 20th and there are a few tiny seedlings inside the cold frame (see the photo below) and it will be interesting to see if they will survive the winter, be eaten by slugs (I don't think so this year), or die because they just aren't big enough to make it.

In past years I have started seedlings in the cold frame, generally with success. Those in the upper photo were transplanted earlier in the year and I have harvested some of the leaves since then. Once the snow falls they will just sit there waiting for spring weather when they will start growing again.

There are two other vegetables still in the garden - kale and beets. The kale was seriously eaten by cabbage white butterfly caterpillars (cabbage worms) but after I picked the worms off (about 30 of them) the kale has started to revive and may begin producing again in the spring. The kale is not protected from cold in any way but kale seems pretty hardy.

The beets aren't large enough to harvest and I don't know if they will start growing again in the spring. We will see.

I planted garlic on October 15th and have been surprised that I have seen no growth. I did plant somewhat deeply and I have had garlic not emerge until spring so I assume all is fine. I have now covered the garlic bed with straw.

Index

It is hard to find topics that I know I have written something about. So here is an index to some of the topics in the past posts.

Brassicas and Cabbage Worms - 7-19-2011
Cold Frames - 4-42010, 3-10-2010, and 1-14-2010
Cover Crops - 4-6-2010 and 1-6-2009
Deer Fencing - 5-28-2010
Dinosaur Kale - 6-13-2011
Kale chips - 6-13-2011
Grapes - 8-27-2011
Lettuce - cold frame - 10-17-2010
Lettuce indoors - 2-1-2011 and 12-16-2010
Overwintered Crops - 4-4-2010
Pole bean trellis - 6-13-2011
Potatoes - 8-7-2011
Squash vine borers - 8-7-2011
Toads - 6-9-2010

Grape Progress, or, not the Grapes of Wrath

We planted two Concord grape vines two years ago. I have been bumbling along not sure how to take care of them - when to prune, what to prune, how much to prune, when to let the bunches grow, how many to let grow. This spring I built an arbor for them to grow on but the top of the arbor was a little higher than the wire on which they had been growing, so none of the bunches of grapes are hanging down from the arbor. They are, instead, hanging from last year's vines that were attached to the wires. I pulled the wire up closer to the top of the arbor and the new growth is mostly up there.

The vines produced lots of little bunches of grapes and I was pretty sure that there were far more than the two plants could sustain. I had read that I should let a small number of bunches grow this third year. I removed those that looked particularly sparse but I let most of them keep growing. They did, although only about half of the grapes in many bunches actually filled out. They started turning purple a while ago and when I walked under the trellis several days ago, I could smell grapes.

Since I have been making jam this week - peach, pear (more about that in a later post) and blackberry - I decided to see if I could collect enough grapes to make grape jam. The recipe calls for 5 pounds of grapes (including stems). I began picking those individual grapes that looked ripe (nice dark purple color - none in this photo have reached that color) instead of picking them by the bunch. That would have sacrificed a lot of unripe grapes. I had a little over two pounds when I weighed the first picking. So I picked some more and then some more, eventually picking all of those I saw that looked ripe and ended up with 4.91 pounds. This turned out to be a little more than I needed so I will amend the recipe to call for 4+ pounds of actual grapes instead of 5 pounds of grapes including stems.

When the jam was finished there was a small amount that didn't fit into the seven 12 ounce jars. When it cooled a taste test showed that it actually was grape jam. So, despite my misgivings and with a lot of room for improvement, we had a successful grape harvest. I think that next year's fruiting canes are mostly up on top of the arbor. I hope that by limiting the number of bunches they will fill out better and look like the Concord grape bunches at the Regional Market. That would also mean bigger grapes. But I am happy with the result this year. And there are still grapes to be picked.

Potato Harvest and Squash Vine Borer Damage

There are good things and bad things happening in the garden. I harvested my crop of potatoes two days ago and stored most of them in a dark room in the cellar in layers in bushel baskets. I think I could have waited a few more weeks to harvest them. The leaves were beginning to yellow quite a bit but they were not close to being completely dried out. But I was looking for space in the garden to start some more pole beans since the ones planted earlier seem to be in decline. Whether this is from the hot weather and lack of rain or from a groundhog that might have been chewing on their stems I don't know. [The soy beans right next to them are pretty much gone - apparently a groundhog favorite. ] After I finished the harvest I read that one way to harvest potatoes is to cut off the plants and leave the tubers in the soil for a couple of weeks before harvesting them.

I have been looking for evidence of squash vine borers for several weeks. For the past several years the only evidence has been suddenly dying plants with the stems nearly chewed apart. I had never seen the squash vine borer. I noticed two days ago that one of my squash plants clearly had been infected and was finished. I pulled out the plant and then dissected the stem where it was clear something had gotten into it. I saw the first borer, followed, as the dissection proceeded, by eight others. In the photo there are three visible - one trying to crawl out of the picture, another just a little above my finger nail, and the third farther back. Today I checked my two other older squash plants. Both had holes in their stems and borers inside. I did my best to scrape the borers out - I only actually saw one in each stem - and the put the stems back together and covered them with soil. I expect one will not survive because I cut out a fairly large section of that part of the stem and that leaves only a small passageway for water to get to the leaves. The other one may survive, although I don't know how many borers I left inside.
One thing I did note is that the borers entered above the cheesecloth that I had wrapped around the stems when the plants were small. One obvious effort to make next year (and the rest of this year) is to keep wrapping cheese cloth around the stems as they grow. I know that one suggestion often made is to grow the plants under row cover material so that the insect that lays the eggs that become the borers can't reach the plant. But then the material has to be removed when the plant begins to flower and it seems to me that the borers come after that. Fortunately I have three other squash plants started, one of which is already producing. We won't lack for squash. This year we have either had a lot of squash at once, or none. Next year I would like to try starting squash plants at three week intervals to even out the harvest and, hopefully, limit the damage from borers.

Dry, Hot Weather

We had a wet April but recently we have been in an extended dry spell, and, more recently, very hot weather. In the past seven days we had four days in a row over 90 degrees, one of which reached 101 degrees. With that heat and no rain (and little moisture in the soil) plants suffer. In my garden the cucumbers and summer squash most dramatically show the effect. By early afternoon on those very hot, dry days they looked like they were dying. Their leaves - both cucumbers and squash have lots of leaves and only root in one place - get seriously wilted. Once the sun goes down they perk up again if I have watered in the past day or two. But fruit growth appears to stop. We recently picked large amounts of squash (nearly 10 pounds one day) and cucumbers (more than 10 pounds one day). But now there are no squash or cucumbers to pick. I assume one plant mechanism when it is hot and there is little moisture available is to stop making the fruit that uses so much water.

If I am correct, when we get rain (if we get rain) and cooler weather the little cucumbers and squash will again form and grow.

I had thought that one of the summer squash plants that had really wilted and tipped over had succumbed to the squash vine borer. But I can't find any evidence of damage to the stem of the plant. No frass. No holes that I can find. So maybe the cheese cloth I wrapped around their young stems did work. Time will tell. I hope that the time for the insects that lay the vine borer has passed because I just planted some more squash and cucumber seeds.