We've got bud break

Pretty damn green for the 1st of April, not complaining though!

Side shot of backyard vineyard

Nice little shoots

Dormant Vines After Pruning

Expansion and Replacement Vines

This season I've added four new varietals to the backyard vineyard, and although I have mentioned them here and there, I wanted to post a comprehensive list of what was added. The theme of the expansion was basically "red wine hybrids" that will survive in the Ohio climate. The single Dornfelder and Noiret vines are viewed as experiments, although I do expect them to thrive.

Varietal	#	Skin	Origin	Expected Use
Catawba	4	Purplish-Red	Ohio native	Sweet Rose wine
Corot Noir	3	Red Skin	Hybrid	Red wine
Dornfelder	1	Red skin	Hybrid	Dark red blending wine
Noiret	1	Red skin	Hybrid	Red wine

Baby Grape Photos

My wife took these close ups that I thought were interesting.

Backyard Vineyard Weed Control

For my backyard vineyard, I've learned the hard way. After a few years of hoeing weeds for each row, I decided when the vineyard was expanded by a new row this year it was time to get some weed control barrier laid down to suppress all weed growth. The simple solution used in my vineyard is cardboard with heavy mulch over top of it. Yes, we could have used roundup and killed all of the grass, but opted for the weed barrier instead for the moisture and temperature control benefits of heavy mulch in the Ohio climate. Our temperatures vary from 0-98 degrees through the seasons of the years here and the mulch seems manageable for the small amount of vines in the backyard.

These pictures show the simple conversion:

Before

Straw Mulch to kill grass

During Mulching

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

How to plant vines

After emailing Ed Kwiek @ Woodswine.com for any tips on planting of the upcoming shipment of Corot Noir, he sent me this link to his website. I thought was an excellent visual example:


http://www.woodswine7.blogspot.com/2009/05/how-to-plant-vines.html

Propogation Attempt

After taking a bunch of cuttings and burying them in the garden until the spring, they are now ready to be rooted and babied for a while to get them up and growing. The cuttings were dipped in some rooting gel that was in the shed, and then put them in this tub which will be taken into the shed and kept in the dark on a heated pad. The plan is to promote root growth with the heating pad and keeping them in the dark to prevent any shoot growth.

Photos: Current Status of the backyard vineyard and garden

Spring is in the air

While the nights are still dipping into the upper 30's and 40's, we are in pretty good shape so far. Everything is blooming in the peach and pear trees, the grapes haven't changed much in the Columbus vineyard and I am hoping it remains that way for a while longer and not risk a frost. No damage yet!

Visiting the northern vineyard this weekend, I don't expect any bud growth yet.

Vineyards Update: 4/1/2011

This weekend, I visited the northern vineyard and got to examine the progress of the vines and if any signs of bud break were on the immediate horizon. At this point, no visible signs were there. The Columbus vineyard has fuzzy bud sprouts showing. I will be making a trip back north in 2 weeks to examine the progress of the Lake Erie vineyard.

Ohio Weather last week

The Ohio weather strikes again and hits us with a snow dusting with wind and sleet. The vines will hopefully benefit from this late weather front and stay dormant longer.

Vineyard Expansion: Catawba

         After much thought, I decided to fill in the empty row with 4 Catawba vines. I had gone back and forth with trying some Petite Pearl or Corot Noir, but ended up choosing the Catawba because is complimentary to what I have already planted (sweet wine) and could be used in a blend of all of my vines quite nicely. The wife and I  have also decided that we will moving to a better school district in the next year and I wanted to get something easy to grow and less experimental, I probably wouldn't even had planted the row if I hadn't already set the posts in 2 feet of concrete. I really hope I can find a home buyer that is interested in growing grapes to care for them.

Here is a link to some information on this breed of grape:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catawba_%28grape%29

Planting a small backyard vineyard

If you have thought about planting a small vineyard in your backyard, you should understand that it doesn't take 50 rows of vines to make good wine. You can have a bottle of wine to drink every weekend of the year with just a dozen vines.


If you are to order vines to plant this spring, I'd recommend Double A vineyards. I have ordered vines from several other online stores and the roots are not even close to what you get with Double A, these plants are very healthy. Once by mistake, I entered the wrong zip code into my online order for the last batch of grapes purchased which resulted in them being stuck over the weekend in a warehouse. Fortunately, they were packaged so well that virtually no damage was done to the vines. I thought that was pretty damn impressive, I was sure the vines were toast.

Feel free to email me for any questions you have, I love talking vines.

My Fruit Garden Layout

I was playing around in google documents, I was able to make this picture pretty easily of what an overhead view of my fruit garden would look like. Between each row is 6 feet, which is enough to get a riding mower through with ease.

 

Where are my vineyards?

         This is where my vineyards are located on a map. According to the newest published zone maps, they are a 6ish zone lines. When I moved to this house, I was in a 5 zone. Climate change has certainly taken hold. The biggest difference between the two locations has been the delayed bud break of the northern vineyard from the lake. Last year it was roughly 3 weeks, the northern vines had plenty of grape clusters. I lost the majority of my clusters in my backyard due to a late frost. This upcoming season,  I will be armed with this new found knowledge of the dreaded late frost and will do anything necessary to keep the clusters from being damaged, including cuddling to give them body heat.

Northern Ohio Vineyard

Here are some pics of the Erie County vineyard at my parents home, they were nice enough to let me experiment with some grape growing on their property. All 42 vines are 4th year Niagara. Due to pruning mistakes and distance from my home, I believe the trunks are about the size of 2 year vines and should be double the size they are right now. I do believe a harvest will be taken from these vines in the upcoming 2011 year, but I believe it will be smaller than the following 2 years. The root systems must be fairly established at this point and should be pushing some good fruit clusters out...if all goes as planned.

How many bottles of wine?

If you were like me, you have wondered how many bottles of wine can you produce if you planted a small vineyard.

The answer is this:  3-6 bottles per vine when mature (4+ years).

In my scenario, I've lost what I estimate to be a years growth at my parents vineyard due to poor pruning practices. I am fortunate that the Niagara vines are extremely vigorous at this location and will recover quickly if everything goes as planned. While these are 4th year vines, the crop expectation next year will be a modest 3rd year harvest with a bigger one coming the following year. I am expecting 1 or 2 bottles per vine next year. We'll see though, nothing ever seems to go as planned and I would advise anyone to account for mistakes such as this when making estimates per vintage when a learning curve is present. Perhaps I am a slow learner.

Grapevine pruning

I thought this was a pretty good visual aide to help understand the basics of grape pruning during the first 3 years of growth.