Finished transplanting young strawberries from the herb garden into the “jam” garden, which pretty much filled all the beds up. Above is a view of the finished garden with the elderberries blooming in the background (they are doing awesome) and the Vidal Blanc grapes barely visible across the street.
Started anchoring the trellis end-posts so that we can run at least the bottom wire for the Vidal Blanc vines. So far, two of the six rows have wires and this evening, we started pounding in the 3 ft. bamboo stakes – one for each grape – to support and guide the vine up to the wire. It rained most of the day, which softened up the ground nicely and the little stakes went in rather easy. We are using zip ties to hold the bamboo stake to the wire, hopefully that is sufficient. We got about 100 done, not even a quarter yet…  |
| Haley meets Sparkles, the calf |
We had a lot of visitors this weekend, including Anja, Duff and Leif from Pittsburgh, Haley from Paris on her way to Colorado, Sam & Caleb and Jens & Grace. So we did not get too much done on the farm, except enjoy walking around and showing it off – which was a lot of fun!
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| Jeff trying to make Leif smile |
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| Tina showing off the refinished barn |
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| Anja and Duff |
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| Sam and Caleb hanging out |
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| Haley holding Leif |
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| Haley and Leif with grapes in the background |
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| Almost smiling! |
We got all our Chambourcin grapes tied up to the double row of catch wires (second row of wires), and we added the post extensions to run the 3rd – high- wire to eventually position the shoots on. We are using the VSP (vertical shoot placement) training system and the grapes look great right now. This year is only their second growing season, and to be safe and not stress the vine too much, we left one bunch of grapes for just the nicest vertical shoots.
Our new Vidal Blanc patch is growing nicely and we have no deer nor rabbit damage so far (knock on wood). We have all the trellis holes drilled, and most of the posts are already pounded in. We are just working on the end posts, where additional cross pieces need to be installed – then we can start running the bottom wire. We ordered 500 bamboo stakes today – to place by each growing vine – to guide it up to the bottom wire. The stakes should be here in 2 days – we hope!This “patch” consists of 500 vines, whereas we only have 200 Chambourcin grapes so far.
