The Grape Inspiration, Northern England Grapevine

The Grape Inspiration....

Here is my German vine, as you can see it's a bit of a monster.  This is grown upon the South facing wall of my home.  This vine was purchased about seven or eight years ago as a one year old cutting from the Black Forest, Germany.  After planted it stayed in the ground fairly dormant, it did have leaves on but did not put on much new growth.  In following years it put on metres and metres of growth to the present day where now it is at its full size for this situation.  I do believe it could potentially grow much bigger.

Here you can see I am giving the vine the first prune of this years growing season.  It's hard to see in this photo but the grapes are at the early stages of forming.  I only want to bunches of grapes maximum per arm of growth so this is the point I prune to.  I do this because if you allow the growth to continue, the grapes will not develop and the plant will put its energy in to growth over fruiting.  I will try to explain this in better detail at a later date.

Check out this film that I've put on YouTube to promote the blog, it was taken about six to eight weeks after the above pictures were taken.  I had to give it its second pruning of the growing season because unfortunately, two long limbs have fell from the wall over night.  Hungover this morning from Corbridge Festival I pinned it back up to the wall and pruned it to allow the air to pass through better cutting out any unnecessary growth.  This also achieves a good leaf to grape ratio.  

Lots of grapes!!!!  Last year's harvest was 16 kilograms, the best so far.  This gave me 10 gallons of wine, around 50 bottles of our very own organic, homegrown and homebrewed TOONSHINE! 

Much needed update on England's Most Northern Vineyard To Be...

Here are a few photo's showing how things are progressing.  We've had a JCB in the garden pushing up spoil from the repair of the collapsed wall a few years back.  The caravan in the background is not where I live, it's home to 13 chickens.

 

I've done some hard pruning to the fruit trees along the wall line.  This is to try and train them back to being fan fruit trees.  This is a technique carried out for centuries maximising yield and minimising shade within the garden.  (Also producing a very impressive looking tree.)  This process is harsh at this time of year, it should of been done before fruiting.  It's unlikely to produce much fruit if any this year but this is conservation for the tree and will keep it growing for a longer period of time.  Before, the branches were too heavy and likely to snap.

Below shows a picture of the West side of the garden.  I've started rotovating in rows for the vines to be planted in.  This will not happen until next year, it's not suitable to plant this far in to summer, especially without irrigation.  Rotovating now will help strip the soil of organic matter which is not too favourable for vines.

   

After doing a lot of research on spacing of rows, I found it fluctuates massively and there is no great given rule as such.  There are a lot good reasons for widening or narrowing distances but one of the main ones is to do with size of machinery used within the yard.  As this is not a big scale yard with masses of machinery I have designed it to fit around me, therefore my rows are a freakish 6'8" apart (1 Matt).

Here's me and the chicken's putting up and digging in a rabbit proof fence, Nina helped too.  

JOB DONE!

 I've created that area for an allotment, may as well grow some veg!

Here's a picture of a standing frame of a polytunnel which i'm going to reinstate.  On the floor inside is another metal frame for a much bigger polytunnel which could become another exciting project but that's on the back burner for now!

I've been going up a lot without the camera recently so there's a lot to show in my next blog post.  Sadly this week, a fox got in to the garden and 13 chickens became 3.  I've learnt a few things, fox's eat the heads off chickens and leave the carcass.  You can also smell the distinct scent of fox on a chicken's carcass. 

R.I.P Chickens