| Archive for Downsizer For an ethical approach to consumption |
| tahir |
GrapesThe labels have disappeared from most of them so I've no idea what we've harvested but we've taken our first crop off our 3 yr old vines, not much especially after (I think) mr fox had his share, but well worth growing. No comparison to shop bought, real flavours, not just a sugar rush. |
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| Jamanda |
I noticed the grapes in my Dad's greenhouse were looking very good this year - fewer but bigger than in previous years. Heavens knows what sort they are - green and maybe a bit muscaty.
I might go and swipe a few later today. |
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| Nick |
I had grapes, but some visitors threw most of the bunches away, claiming 'Management'. | ||
| tahir |
Did you harvest any? |
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| Nick |
Not yet, I've been a bit jet set. I shall have a peak in a few moments. | ||
| mousjoos |
We have an old vine on the front of the house, not sure of the age, & the fruit seems to develope well but rots just as it appears to be at the point of being ripe.......very few bunches survive, & it's the same every year. This is despite following very thorough pruning instructions from a friend of ours who works on a large "domain" near Beziers.
Can we avoid disease through cutting back very hard, maybe even removing part of the vine altogether? |
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| tahir |
Is it mildewy? If so anything to improve air circulation will help, as will removing some of the leaves to enhance ripening of the fruit. | ||
| mousjoos |
Havent seen any mildew, they just seem to go brown & shrivel very quickly. As for circulation, the wind ciculates very freely as we're in a valley that gets weather from the Med & from the Atlantic... believe me, there's no shortage of wind!
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| tahir |
James is probably better equipped than me to advise, Sean too, so far all we've managed in 3 years is mulching, 1 round of pruning, 1 round of thinning and harvesting.. | ||
| Nick |
Plenty of bunches, all like bullets. Mostly because they are 97.5% pips! A handful of them were softer, and a bit sharp. Because I don't know the variety, I have no idea if they'll improve, or if they're pig food, or what, really. Pretty tho. |
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| tahir |
Still relatively early, give em another couple of weeks | ||
| sean |
Dunno I'm afraid. It's years since I did stuff about diseases of vines. |
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| nettie |
I have one of Tahir's grape vines, no grapes this year  although last year we got one lovely bunch!! the year before one almost got to fruition but something nibbled the stalk and the whole bunch just shrivelled and died
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| Frewen Feltmaker |
So go get some more and start again 
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| welshboy454 |
Bumper crop. The vine(don't know the name) was planted outside a open fronted plastic roofed lean to. it was probably 2 or 3 years old when we moved here 3 years ago. It was only sbout 8 ft span but now it has gone the full 30 ft down one wall and is 6 ft along the side.
Wasps have been a problem leaving about half the bunches looking brown and shrivelled but the ones we have been eating taste great. |
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| jocorless |
We had 17lbs of Grapes off our Black Hamburg which considering its in a 12 x 8 ft Greenhouse I think is a fantastic result - Most of them have gone for Wine simply because there was no way we could eat them all before they went off - Even though we all love grapes alot
Now we need to prune the vine back correctly so we get the same sort of result next year - Any tips or ideas ? |
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| sean |
RHS advice. This looks fairly clear to me. | ||
| jocorless |
Ahh thanks Sean - even I understand that! | ||
| Cathryn |
I am still trying to decide what to do with the Black Hamburg vine that we have. It has mildew and scale (?) and produces masses of grapes all of which are unfit to eat unless you wipe off all the mildew. I am torn between heavy duty pruning and removing many of the bunches of grapes so that the vine can concentrate on a few good ones, or very heavy duty sawing off at the stem so that I can tackle it properly. It is completely in the way as well. It's 150 years old and this is what makes me hesitate. It's two neighbours have had the brutal treatment and survived. I should probably wait until the start fruiting and then saw it off but if I hit my head on it one more time... | ||
| yummersetter |
how are you growing yours, Jo?
I have my Black Hamburg in a polytunnel on two wooden support beams about six foot off ground level running each side of the central path. I have a single stem in the centre at the farthest end from the door from which two branches run tied to the beams the length of the polytunnel, about 18 ft. The roots run out into the rose garden beyond. I try to keep every shoot cut back to four leaves that hasn't got grapes on and to three leaves beyond the flowers/ bunch for the rest, and cut out the flower sprays to one per foot. It's a battle as the shoots try very hard to fill the entire polytunnel if you miss a couple of weeks. I tend to let the shoots run a bit at the farthest end from the main stem, as long as I can still open the door. After the fruit are in (which'll be in a couple of weeks for us ) and the leaves are fallen, I cut back to three or four buds on each shoot from the main branch, untie and lower the branches to the ground, along each side of the path. If there hasn't been time before, it's the kind of job I do over the Christmas break. I used to cut one of the branches away completely in alternative years but I haven't done that for a while and it doesn't seem to matter. I quite like having tough old wood to put the ties on rather than new green stems ( I usually use rubber tree-ties). I retie the branches up to the beams in spring when the buds are shooting at the furthest end from the stem. I have no idea how many we'll pick this year, but one of the branches broke its tie to the beam at the far end, the last six foot had to be lifted and retied and I could hardly lift it for the weight of the grapes! Mould and botrytis is our problem usually, but this recent dry and sunny weather is helping keep that down this year. Apart from dessert and wine, I quite fancy making some grape jelly - is the recipe as other fruit jellies? |
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| jocorless |
Ours is literally just stuck in the greenhouse and grown along the length - One down the roof apex and another down the join between the roof and one of the sides
Apart from that we do nothing apart from leaving the windows and door open during the summer as anyone does to make sure it doesn't get too hot for the tomatoes or the vine |
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| James |
I've not grown Black Hamburg, but I seem to recall that it’s an old “pure vinifera” variety that has susceptibility to downy & powdery mildew, and may well be susceptible to botrytis (given the correct autumnal conditions of cold nights and warm moist days). There’s no easy way of sorting these problems out. You can minimise your risk of serious damage by correct pruning (which your doing), keeping airflow as free around your vine as possible, trying to minimise the time that moisture lingers on the vine and fruit thinning (which I’d recommend). The problems can be kept at bay “organically” by sulphur dusting (I put it in quotes because it doesn’t seem organic to me….). But this is only a short lived answer, and if you choose this route, you may need to dust numerous times through the season. Your bunches shrivelling and dropping off might be something else which I’ve forgotten the name of, but again it’s a genetic thing that some vines are more prone to do than others. The only thing I can suggest is that you harvest slightly early, when you see the first bunches starting to shrivel and drop. You wouldn’t be able to make red wine from them but you could press quickly and make a neutral dry white (or a light blush). Cutting an overgrown vine hard back is usually beneficial, but I wouldn’t touch it until November at the earliest, otherwise it’ll bleed heavily. Just wear a hard hat until then! I’ve read that the following year after a hard cut back you can get a lot of vigorous vegetative growth- in America, they manage this by allowing one cane to grow uncontrolled (they call this the “bull cane”), while the rest of the vine is tended and pruned as usual. By pushing excessive vigour into the bull cane, the fruiting canes don’t grow as much side branches and thus the fruiting area is more open and thus less prone to mildew, and quicker to ripen. |
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| Cathryn |
That's really useful James, thank you. It has given me the confidence to really prune them properly (in November).
The grapes used to be eaten but that was in the days when the glass house was heated by enormous pipes and each bunch could be lovingly tended by the gardener. They don't drop off and they have a good flavour but they are mostly covered in mould. |
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| yummersetter |
Is that shanking? The trouble with sulphur powder is that is goes everywhere except where you want it to be ( usually in the middle of the bunch), and its hard to get the taste of it out of the grapes if you want to use them for dessert. |
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| yummersetter |
Can I ask you another question, James?
I've got a 220ft row of posts and pig wire dividing the new field we've got in South Somerset, running north/south and I'd like to run a wire at the top and have vines growing on it. It's been meadow/orchard for centuries, so it'll be loam on clay. Any suggestions for grape varieties? For drinking purposes. |