Vertical Climbing Plants on a Grape Arbor

Update: I've noticed this post has been getting some hits, so I tried pulling the photos from Google image caches and salvaged what I could. These were lost during the great google+ mishap of 2011.

I built this simple arbor for the climbing plants that we grow. The total cost was around 150 bucks, but the concrete was leftover from another project and didn't need purchased. Each of the 4 posts that hold it up have a vertical plant growing up it. The goal is that the Riesling grape vine will cover the top of the arbor and provide a natural canopy for shade. I am considering putting a swing or hammock under neath of it, if my wife is reading this: I want a hammock.

2 - Cascade Hops
1 - Riesling Grape Vine
1 - Purple Climbing Clematis


Photos of my Pergola, early season growth stage.

Clematis growing up a leg I put a fence on

Hops climbing some rope

Side view of my simple Pergola

Chaptalization - Adding sugar to your juice

If you are like me and have made "country" wine with frozen berries, you have most likely had add to sugar to your juice to increase the alcohol to a desirable level of 10-12%, but I've always thought that this was not necessary or legal for wine made from grapes. While this is true in America, wine makers in Europe commonly due this to make up for the lack of sugar in the grapes from lower amounts of sunshine and colder climates. Even grapes from the prestigious areas of France are doctored up using this method. I have a new respect for California Grapes right now, this is a more natural finished product in my opinion. The sunshine of the climate produces all of the sugar you need for the finished wine, and too my knowledge is not even legal if you are to use the California wine association on your labels.

 Cheers!

Cool Wine Soil Display

I found this picture of a display on a wine blog I follow, thought it was pretty cool.

Getting a peek "under the hood" of the soil that the grapes are grown in is something I've never come across, until this.

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

2011 Backyard Fruit Projections

I thought it would be interesting to estimate how much fruit I could potentially yield in the 2011 growing season and then translate that into potential wine.


Blackberry Crowns
 - Blackberry crowns yield potential is difficult to project. Crop estimates from 6 to 46 pounds per plant have been reported for triple crown blackberries. I find it difficult to believe any more than 5 pounds each could come off of my canes, so I will estimate at 4 pounds per planted blackberry bush - 20 total pounds

Blueberry Bushes
- My bushes are too young to produce fruit -- or anything worth accounting for if it does.

Black Raspberry Bush
- My single bush should yield between 1-2 pounds(will be blended with blackberry)

Grapes
- Of my 20 backyard grapevines, I will have only 12 being 4th year vines. From each of these vines, I will estimate half of optimal harvest, due to growth status thus far, which would be roughly 8 pounds. I would get 96 pounds of fruit by these projections.


Total - 4th year projections

Grapes - 96 lbs / 15 lbs per gallon =  6.4 gallons = 30-35 bottles
 Berries(all combined) = 22-25 lbs total / 4 = 5(ish) gallons = 20-25 bottles

Bottles of finished wine goal for 2011: 50-60 bottles

Ohio Raspberry Guide

Excellent read for growing raspberries in Ohio.


http://ohioline.osu.edu/hyg-fact/1000/1421.html

Winter Pruning Berry Canes

I thought this was a pretty good tutorial on pruning berry canes.

http://www.graspr.com/videos/Properly-Pruning-Raspberries-Blackberries-1

Blackberry Growing Information

I thought this was a pretty good resource for growing blackberries, it's based on North Carolina weather. 

http://www.ces.ncsu.edu/depts/hort/hil/ag401.html

Blackberry Trellis Product

I WILL be engineering something similar to this product, I love the concept.

Blackberry Bush trellis for small spaces

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.

 

Wine Making - The Basics

The essential steps in wine making can be summarized as follows:

1. Extract the flavor and aroma from the base ingredients by chopping, crushing, pressing, boiling or soaking them.
2. Add sugar, acid, nutrients, and yeast to the fermentation media or liquor to achieve the proper ratio and ferment, covered, for 3 to 10 days in a primary fermentation vessel (crock, jar or polyethylene pail) at 70-75 degrees Fahrenheit.
3. Strain off the liquid from the pulp, put it (the liquid) into a secondary fermentation vessel (a carboy or jug), fit a fermentation trap (airlock) on the mouth of the bottle, and allow fermentation to proceed at 60-65 degrees Fahrenheit until all bubbling ceases (after several weeks).
4. Siphon the wine off the sediments (lees) into another clean secondary fermentation vessel. Reattach the fermentation trap. Repeat after another one or two months and again before bottling.
5. When wine is clear and all fermentation has stopped, siphon into wine bottles and cork the bottles securely. Leave corked bottles upright for 3-5 days and then store them on their side at 55 degrees Fahrenheit for six months (white wine) to a year (red wine) before sampling. If not up to expectations, allow to age another year or more.

Build your own winery equipment

This guy's site shows you how he built all of his winery equipment, it is pretty amazing what he was able to accomplish.


http://www.stevehughes.org/Site/The_Winery/The_Winery.html

Time to Bottle!

My son helping out bottling wine.

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.

Fruit per gallon

For a quick reference, here are some estimates for how much fruit is required for a 5 gallon batch of wine, simply divide by 5 for the per gallon estimate. I would advise anyone to over estimate on fruit needed to avoid a watered down tasting wine..

Apricots . . . . . . . . . . . . . .18 lbs
Blackberries . . . . . . . . . . 15 lbs.
Blueberries . . . . . . . . . . . 13 lbs.
Currents. . . . . . . . . . . . . .12 lbs.
Elderberries . . . . . . . . . . 10 lbs.
Gooseberries. . . . . . . . . .11 lbs.
Peaches . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 lbs.
Pears . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22 lbs.
Persimmons . . . . . . . . . . 15 lbs.
Pineapple . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 lbs.
Plums . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 lbs.
Raspberries . . . . . . . . . .. 15 lbs.
Strawberries . . . . . . . . .  16 lbs.
Watermelon (Centers) . . 18 lbs.

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.

The Blackberries

I have planted a total of 5 blackberry crowns in my garden. This is the 3rd year of growing. Four of the plants are triple crown blackberry and some kind of thorned trailing breed.

I got a good amount of berries last year, but nothing substantial. My expectation is that the upcoming 2011 harvest will be good, definitely better the previous. Starting this year, I pruned the canes using a method I read about called "tipping". It's nothing overly complicated, you simply cut the tips off of the blackberry canes when they reach a fairly desirable height for easy harvest, I choose roughly 5 feet before pruning. The plant results in shooting out the lateral canes at a much faster growth rate. The plant focuses it's energy on the side shoots, and not upwards growth. The single thorned trailing breed seems to be a less desirable variety of blackberry plant, I don't really know what to do with the damn thing. I just keep wrapping it over some wires on a trellis I built for the blackberry bush row.

In the Ohio weather and ease of growing, I would go straight to the triple crown blackberries and not waste time with a more labor intensive breed such as the trailing varities.

Information on "tipping":
http://ohioline.osu.edu/hyg-fact/1000/1431.html

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.

The Blueberries - Fall planting 2010

  

This is a new addition to the backyard garden, five bluecrop blueberry bushes.  I wasn't really planning on adding any blueberries to the garden but I saw these at Lowes for 5 bucks a piece so I pulled the trigger.

Mature Bluecrop blueberry bushes can yield 10-15 pounds of fruit per year, so the full wine making potential of 5 mature bushes would equate to 50-75 total pounds of fruit. Each gallon of wine required 3 pounds of fruit bringing the total amount of gallons to 16-25, which equals 80-125 bottles. In terms of finished wine these are some pretty substantial statistics in my opinion. I hope these numbers are accurate. The trade off for harvest potential is the maturity period of 5 years.

These are fairly pathetic looking at this point just after being planted and mulched.