WELL, WE DID IT !!!
WE SURVIVED OUR 1ST YEAR !!!
And the vineyard has survived ... voracious deer, gol' darn gophers, defective water system assembly (code for my stupid plumbing mistakes) and monster weeds that overwhelmed the trellises. But the job at hand, pruning, is rapidly nearing the critical period. So, today we started to clear the weeds that the goats have not managed to eat. Notice the "goats' exodus" of the vineyard due to the noise of the weed wacker™.
That's "mi amigo, Leo" wacking™ away at the weeds. We used the small sheet of plywood propped up against the grapevine to protect the plant as well as the drip-lines during the wacking process™
This year's pruning is a little different from that of an established vineyard. In this first and second year's pruning we are establishing the trunk & cordons of the grapevine. From the description of most sources, including The Backyard Vintner by Jim Law, it seems like we got the equivalent of "two years worth of growth" on most of our grapevine as you can see in the photo of one of the grapevines with the white poster board background.
So, from all the shoots that have grown out from the clone, we will choose the straightest & most upright cane, then prune away all the others. That remaining cane we will tie off to a "grape stake" with some of that green gardening elastic tie or use "growtubes". We will also top (cut-off) this cane at the level of the trellis wire to stimulate lateral growth.
Hey, its starting to rain and I hear its going to rain all week, so we will probably take a couple of weeks to tame these weeds as we dance around the rain storms. So we will be actually pruning in the last weeks of winter or the first week or so of spring!
Wishing you happy anniversary from down in the vineyard,
John
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