Trimming The Vine

Trimming the vine is my job sometimes as it's a two days work and not always easy. Sometimes I have to use a ladder in order to be able to reach the top.

This year is not good at all when it comes to vine, but the work must be done anyway, if you want good results next year. It may look strange, but that's how it works and I'll explain why.

The Jungle

Trimming the vine is a job one has to do a few times every year. Some neglect to do it or think it's unnecessary as grapes are growing and ripe anyway but the result is not the same.

This is how one part of the vine looked like and the others too, but I thought no need to make 3 or 4 jungle photos as you can understand the meaning from one photo.

Basically you can't see the grapes as the leaves, the jungle is covering it. Which is bad for many reasons, one of which is the leaves are withholding the sunbeams, the heat, which means it is delays ripening. We have four seasons here, late October is the end of grapes, till then it needs to reach a certain sugar level if you want to do something good with it, otherwise all you will get is vinegar, which I don't want obviously.

The last trimming was done somewhere at the beginning of spring, so it's time again for another one.

On the photo I marked the two areas that need my attention. The first arrow shows where it was cut previously and where a new branch grew since then. The second arrow shows that on the new branch (that is not needed by the way), another branch is growing already.

The new branch needs to be cut as that is a parasite so to speak as it's not needed. Every unnecessary branch is taking away important nutrients from the grapes and if trimming is not done in time, all you do is growing branches and leaves instead of grapes, which obviously we don't want as that's not the purpose of it.

Another good example of why trimming is necessary.

Put Waste To Good Use

My basket was full in a couple of minutes, although it's a very big basket. I was able to fill it several times in an hour and the work was not done yet. Now you may ask what I am doing with the cut offs and that's a very good and appropriate question.

Reuse, Recycle, Compost

Starting from this year, we have two compost bins in use. The main one is a plastic one, specially made for compost. The one on the photo is an improvisation. It's a piece old of an old heating system, that was used decades ago. It looks awful, but who cares. It's important that it serves the purpose.

It was 70% fill with cauliflower leaves already, so I put the vine leaves on top of it, to create a good mix.

Here it is, filled already. The main idea is to add as many types of green as possible as every type has different nutrients. The compost made of it will be rich in different nutrients.

The Problem

The big problem is that a certain type of disease hit the vine. It is called Botrytis.

In the Botrytis infection known as "noble rot" (pourriture noble in French, or Edelfäule in German), the fungus removes water from the grapes, leaving behind a higher percent of solids, such as sugars, fruit acids and minerals. This results in a more intense, concentrated final product. The wine is often said to have an aroma of honeysuckle and a bitter finish on the palate. source

This is going to need to be treated as otherwise it's going to spread.

Too much rain and humidity is facilitating the appearance of the disease.

So this year I'm not counting on grapes, but I still hope we can harvest some to make some juice. It would be nice.

Do you see anything promising here? Because I don't, but then again, we can't have everything. We were lucky to harvest the currants and raspberries before the hail storm. Others were not so lucky.