Grapes
This years garden was a bit of a disappointment, perhaps that is an understatement. Yet I knew not to expect much, Joel finished cancer treatment the end of May and then in June he started going twice a week for therapy instead of once a week. (With Therapeutic Riding he is now up to 3 therapy sessions a week.) Sweet little Samuel, who is not so little, has turned out to be a bit of a clingy guy. He is happy for the most part but likes to be with me all the time. This combination doesn’t lend itself to dynamic gardening. All that aside and I am still not sure that one will ever be able to use dynamic and garden in the same sentence when describing me. Unless it was, “You know Cheryl, she’s the one who’s neighbor has a dynamic garden.”
The one thing that did well this year was our grapes. In the spring Dave pruned the vine right back. I was worried but he’d been watching several youtube videos on how to do it. Within a short time we had lots of new growth and lots of clusters.
I think we probably could have harvested a few days early but they were still really nice.
We did have a lot of bugs so we moved the processing operation outside.
Dave grabbed a big bucket, added grapes to it and ran the hose on them for awhile. We had these guys anyone know what kind of bug these guys are?? We also had earwigs {{{YUCK}}} I would love to hear your ideas on natural bug control for earwigs and whatever those guys are.
Of course, as I alluded to earlier time is precious around here so I had to freeze the grapes and will thaw and process them into juice and jelly later. We simply washed and de-bugged them, plucked them off their stems and then bagged them. In the end from one vine we had 21 pounds.
Dave is looking into propagating a vine from the current vine. Hopefully in a few years we will have several vines going. 
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7 Comments
Michelle
Wow, Cheryl! Those grapes look incredible!! I'm not much of a gardener. Everything I touch in the garden, dies. What a great grape harvest, though. They're beautiful! Thanks for linking with the Sit and Relax weekend hop!
Jenny
These look so yummy. My kids and husband love grapes. We are always on the look out when they go on sale and buy several pounds. They don't last around here : D
Quinn
How exciting!! I'd love to know what videos he was watching because I'm certain that I botched the pruning this spring. Your grapes reminded me there are some available for foraging across the street. If it ever stops raining maybe we'll go see what we can glean 🙂
ontheoldpath
I'll ask him if he remembers he was pruning like crazy. Much of the fruit trees had been let go so the pear tree that we never saw any pears on before gave us 4 or 5. Even the apple trees that are so over grown did better. Now he is eager to try and graft and propagate I believe. Anyway I will ask him.
Cooking Up Faith
Oh wow, those look beautiful!! How fun!! 🙂
marlece
WOW!! This is amazing, I want to EAT some. I think you'll be able to keep up with that bundle of grapes you have there, wow, and my mouth is watering!
Connie
Oh I was drooling looking at your photos…and jealous in a Christian way LOL….just kidding. But we just moved this past Feb from our vineyard.
We had about three acres of grapes and included in the wine grapes were three rows of concord….we usually got 100-150 litres of grape juice and made jelly…plus gave lots away.
We now moved and don't have concord…not sure the grapes that are growing here…but green grapes…and we are grieving the loss of our concords…so next spring, we will be planting concords.
Thankfully I still have 80 pounds of frozen grapes…still waiting to be made into juice.
You have a beautiful family…I've added you as a follower…and look forward to getting to know your family.
Blessings.