Friday, September 19, 2008

The Grapes are Ripe


This is one of many bowls of grapes we're picking right now. The grapes are Himrod Golden Seedless, which is a white seedless, very sweet table grape.
This year we're just going to eat them and make more wine with them. Last year I made more jelly than I'll use in a life time, as well as two gallons of a very smooth dry wine. The wine was so good, we're making more this year. I predict we'll end up with 4 gallons from this year's crop since I'm not making jelly and we solve the raccoon problem by putting a hot wire around the grape.
The vine is huge. It stretches about 25 feet wide and is about 6 feet deep. We've found that very hard pruning in the spring to remove old wood gets us the best crop of grapes. Since it fruits on last years wood, we try and remove most of the wood that is at least two years old, leaving the younger, more productive vines.
This is what it looks like, freshly pruned:

And this is what it looks like in the late summer:

7 comments:

Shalana, the funky felter said...

Those look so yummy! White grapes are my husbands favorite fruit. Honestly, it is about the only fruit that he'll eat (LOL!) - at least he picked a good one as his favorite!

Carol Dean Sharpe said...

WOW. That is a gorgeous grape vine! We have some grapes but they haven't done much the last two years...and even before that they were left for the birds. I keep telling my husband we should just plant some new vines. This one is probably twenty years old and has never been properly pruned. It uses the chain link property fence and some boxwoods as trellis. hehe

Anonymous said...

That looks so healthy!
We used to have a grape vine but I would always leave mine to the birds too, felt sorry for them because we were in a drought season.

Lucky Girl said...

I think I need to invite myself over for some of your wine. I need your address, okay?

Seriously, I need your address--you won the book giveaway on my blog! Send it to luckygirltrading at yahoo dot com. And I probably won't use it to drop in and beg a glass of wine. ;)

Quill and Greyson said...

Those are very nice vines, and a lovely picture of grapes too.

Corri Taylor said...

wowser! and yumm-o lucky you!

Bubbles said...

I love grapes and its even better that they are seedless. It looks so pretty when its grown