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| Pruned vines |
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| Not yet pruned vines |
Chronicles of the Long Shot Farm
Grape
Grape Harvest 2015
We had a great grape harvest this year – weather conditions were perfect and harvest parameters were great for each of our varieties.
We started with our Concords, which we picked over several days during the last week in August. We sold most of them at the local fruit auction. On August 30th we picked the last of them and pressed them for juice (some of which we fermented for some wine experiments).
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| Nothing beats fresh Concord grapes and juice! |
We harvested Chambourcin grapes from our young vines on September 7 (Labor Day)- a bit early, as we are going to try and make some rose wine from these.
On September 13 we picked all of our Vidal Blanc grapes. This was our first harvest from these vines and we are looking forward to some white wine experiments. Next year, we should have a lot more as the vines mature.
And finally on the weekend of September 19 and 20, we picked the remaining Chambourcin grapes. It kept us busy all month! Now comes the clean up of the bird netting, the harvest bins and all equipment maintenance.
State of the Vineyard – August 17
Looking good – time to bring out the bird netting:
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| Chambourcin |
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| Vidal Blanc |
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| Chardonel |
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| Concord |
Grape Update
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| Vidal Blanc |
Our grapes look amazing this year. The Chambourcin and Vidal Blanc vines are loaded with fruit, and the newer vines (Chardonel, Corot Noir and Concord) are growing nicely.
We worked on the trellis for the Corot Noir vines, which were just planted a few weeks ago. We need to get the wires strung, so we can tie up the young grapevines!
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| Chambourcin |
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| Drilling Post Holes |
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| Sharpened Fence Posts |
Assessing Winter Damage
The 2014/15 winter was harsh – maybe not record breaking, but awfully cold. The good news is that we had a lot of snow, which helped to insulate the roots of plants. The other good news is that we never experienced a period of warming temperatures in early spring, only to dip into deep cold again.
All in all, we could have done worse. It seems that our grapevines sustained no winter injury at all – mainly due to the fact that we only planted hybrid varieties, which we selected for cold hardiness appropriate for our growing zone.
We did loose a few blueberry bushes, but those had been weaker plants going into the winter. Also one of our Asian Pear trees did not make it.
However, our blackberries did get hit by winter damage: probably between 15 – 20% of the fruiting canes are damaged. Luckily this does not mean that the plant itself is dead, there will just be less berries. (we had expanded our blackberry patch, so we probably come out even at harvest time compared to last year)
Some of our herbs did not survive the cold winter either – not surprisingly, the rosemary did not make it, but neither did the marjoram. All other perennial herbs are growing fine and the dill self-seeded again.
