The first bunch of the grape harvest this month.Despite my worst efforts, there are tiny green grapes growing along the cyclone fence. My respect for grapes grew tenfold with this near-miss experiment.
The Thompson grapevine was a gift from my Auntie Pat years ago. When I say years, I mean years. I don’t even remember how many. The plant looked vibrant and about to bolt when I took it home in one of those tiny, almost triangular pots used to mass produce things like pine forest seedlings.
Any plant-respecting gardener would have transplanted this soon-to-be grape vine into a one-gallon pot. However, this was back in the days when my romance with the Handsome Woodsman was new. After work, I would drive up to his house in Paradise, where he had more than an acre of land with a creek running east to west.
Somehow, I kept the grape-vine alive through summers and winters, making sure there was just enough water in the tiny plastic torture chamber to keep the grape from drying into a stick.
Did I mention this went on for years?
Looking back, I wasn’t planting anything in the ground. I was looking for a house to buy and wondering where the future would lead with Dave. I kept the grapevine alive in case I found another sunny location where it could live and thrive.
When I moved into a new rental, I figured it was now or never for that grapevine. Let’s say this was 2½ years ago, because frankly I don’t remember. Once that vine hit some real soil, it grew like it had been storing up the will to live since the ice age. Vines stretched wide across the cyclone fence, grasping for life like a shipwrecked sailor.
I don’t know what the rootstock was on this baby, but it was ready to grow.
I wasn’t disappointed that first year when it bore no fruit. I deserved to be punished with a fruitless grapevine after the little I had given the plant. That first year I just let it ramble, happy to have some life clinging to twisted wire.
Then a reader invited me to harvest some Concord grapes from his back yard. These were small, as backyard grapes often are, but so delicious I wanted to eat them until my teeth turned purple. If I wanted to have my own delicious grapes, I needed to become a better viticulturist.
Pruning. That’s what viticulturists do.
Of course, I had no idea what I was doing, but I vaguely followed some directions, http://tinyurl.com/yckrprtj, that clearly stated the biggest mistake of first-time grapes growers is not pruning enough of the plant sometime between January and March.
Pruning seems counterintuitive. We’re told that if we trim our hair on a regular basis it will actually grow more quickly. Huh? I pruned my vine just a little bit that first year, and I received no fruit, so there you go.
Earlier this year I cut off all the dead vines, closed my eyes, and snipped off about 12 feet of this plant. I also added compost at the base and let the winter rains water it deeply. I also put a note on the fence dividing my yard from the neighbors, asking him not to spray weed killer near the fence line.
This year the plant finally forgave me. I have itty-bitty grapes. A lot of itty-bitty grapes.
Here we are in August and I harvested my first grapes this week. This does not count the grapes I have been nibbling to test whether some of the clusters were ripe and ready.
I’ve read a lot along the way: http://tinyurl.com/ycfndd8b.
Another grape information source used words like “tensiometer” and “divinator.” I’m just trying to eat some grapes here, not earn my master’s degree at UC Davis’s school of viticulture.
From what I can gather, the grapes need to be watered, and watered deeply at least twice a month.
For a very technical explanation of grapevine anatomy, check out this link from the University of California. After I read it, I realized why I did not become a plant scientist: http://tinyurl.com/y9nz4g3m.
