I recently decided to get another pound of worms to start a new worm bin with, the last batch froze to death in a tragic story I shall not dare repeat.
I use the worm castings to make worm/compost tea, which I spray on the foliage regularly. I then take the remaining amount of the mixture and use it on my vegetables. You will notice and immediate difference in your plants if you use this fertilizer method. Some will be more vigorous than others but it will certainly be noticeable. Up until now, this is the only type of spray or fertilizer used on my backyard vineyard. I do believe that with the upcoming year being my first harvest, I will spray pesticides to further solidify my harvest chances.
I bought my worms from a local guy @ www.rootnaturally.com
Filed under: Frost, Vines, Vineyard | Tags: Backyard vino, backyard wine, vineyard
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.
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
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
Excellent read for growing raspberries in Ohio.
http://ohioline.osu.edu/hyg-fact/1000/1421.html
Filed under: Blackberries
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
Filed under: Blackberries
I WILL be engineering something similar to this product, I love the concept.
Filed under: Vines
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.
