The Vineyard is Planted

Our grape vines were delivered via UPS last Friday and we were ready for them! We had dug over 150 holes in preparation for their arrival. In one day, we planted each grape vine and installed the blue grow tubes to help them grow towards the vine trellis wire. Here you can see our upper and lower vineyard. These two vineyards flank the garden and green house.

The lower vineyard pictured on the right, is planted with Marquette grape vines. This is a red grape which is cold and disease hardy. The upper vineyard, pictured on the left, is planted with Frontenac blanc, also cold and disease hardy- this vine, which will produce a white wine, was just introduced this year. Click Read More to learn more about the planting of our vineyard!

We waited all week for the vines to arrive. We were ready by mid week, and despite the rain wanted to get started! Not to worry, there were lots of other garden projects we worked on while waiting for the vines to be delivered from Northeastern Vine Supply. 
The vines arrived in one large box, all wrapped up- they were bare root plants, and needed to be planted very quickly. They were dormant, so we had some time if we kept them moist, but they arrived on my last Friday of maternity leave, so we needed to act fast. Our friendly neighbors (Kirt and Joanne) came over to help- Joanne helped watch Ella after working in the morning on the vineyard, and Kirt helped dig the holes wider, as I will explain in a moment.

It was a little unnerving to see the vines arrive this way. In their dormant state the look no better than a bare twig. We did however see a few green buds, so we know that there is life in them! We just have to work hard at keeping them alive!

Here is one of the Marquette vines in the ground. We quickly found out that our holes were too narrow for the vines roots. We had originally dug holes that were about a foot around and a foot deep. We determined that it would be easier to spread the roots out as instructed if we had a small ditch to plant each vine in! So, we trimmed the roots a bit, dug shallow trenches on either side of the hole and were able to spread and straighten the roots out on either side of the plant as we planted them in the main hole. It worked out great! It was a lot of back breaking work, especially on the upper vineyard which is on a slope! Each of the 165 holes was reworked as we went along with the planting. 

After the 80 Frontenac blanc vines and 85 Marquette vines were all planted and watered,  we installed the blue grow tubes with bamboo stakes. Ella at this point had had enough of being outside and not in my arms, so Jason finished on his own.The blue sleeves we comprised of a blue plastic sheet rolled inside a blue plastic flexible tube. These grow tubes should protect the grape vine as it grows this season and help it to produce a strong trunk with which to support future growth. The tube also helps to promote accelerated growth of the vine. Why blue? The blue tint of both the plastic sheet and the tube amplifies blue light which increases beneficial photosynthetically active radiation. The blue light helps to promote diameter growth in the vine, producing a more robust vine. The tube is placed over the vine, and is buried at the base of each plant. 
 We are excited to take care of these grape vines and work even harder next season installing the trellis wire and training the young vines up and across the wires. And of course in a few years being able to harvest grapes and make wine!