How are the veggies coming along?

[AHPP]

4 hours ago, peds said:

 

Also keep in mind that ordering new polythene doesn't waste the old, short sections... you can make very useful mini tunnels out of pallets and waterpipe or electric ducting.

Tell me more. 

[AHPP]

Let’s talk infrastructure. I’ve got this stuff and various things I could clad a hemispherical prism with: black/translucent plastic, scaffold netting, broken heras panels, other steel netting (including some very clean three foot tall chain link fence). Might even have some steel roof sheets or wrinkly tin. Have plenty of wood and other usual crap too. What to make? Some kind of wire walled pig ark looking thing? Static or skiddable? I’ve got about a fifth of an acre to site it in or drag it round. Goals and aspirations are principally swayed by fate and circumstance. Like if I found a bag of giraffe feed, I’d probably get a giraffe. 
 

Edited Sunday at 14:48 by AHPP

[AHPP]

Doesn’t have to be a hemispherical prism. Could be a geodesic dome for example. What it ****************ing won’t be though is a sweat lodge for womb bathing and breath work ceremonies. I like capitalism, meat and white culture. 

[difflock]

Ah! Ha!

Two bunches of grapes shaping  up.

Fingers crossed.

[sime42]

17 hours ago, difflock said:

Ah! Ha!

Two bunches of grapes shaping  up.

Fingers crossed.

 

Nice.

What have you done by way of training or pruning to attain them then? Is that stem last year's growth?

I've got a grape vine that's never flowered yet, though it's at least 5 years old. I suspect I'm being over zealous in cutting it back each year, (due in part to not wanting it to take up too much space in the greenhouse ).

 

 

[difflock]

Sime42,

In so far as I have observed, vines fruit on the new seasons growth. And hard pruning should not, as far as I know, be a problem, if one observs how hard commercially planted vines are kept pruned. 

My pruning is almost random, verging on the chaotic, and was quite ruthless a couple of years back, when   I identified what I imagined were the best strongest stems coming from the root, and kept them, while getting rid of the others, all while attempting to get them trained away from the light to the front, and round onto the warmer back wall.

I would need to tober the stuff that is growing quite madly up under the heat of the roof(a full unreachable without a ladder, 2 stories up)

Cheers

P.S.

Anyone know how they are pollinated? Obviously self pollinating since we only have the 1 vine, but what is the mechanism? Not wind, and no flying insect life in our porch.

Edited 10 hours ago by difflock

[sime42]

Thanks. I think then it's not the degree of hard pruning, but rather my timing of it that's been the issue. Maybe I've cut the new seasons growth off too early, before the flowers have had a chance to form. I'll try to leave it longer this year, (though its odd that yours looks like that already, and mine is showing no signs of any flowers yet).

 

 

 

Regards pollination. I'm sure they're insect, rather than wind. It only takes one busy little bee, (or any other of the various pollinators), to cover an awful lot of little flowers. You must have had a secret intruder in the porch I think!

 

 

[difflock]

I "understand" one prunes in the winter, or Halloween onwards, having observed vines being pruned in the Moselle valley during Halloween school hols, cos the wife was a teacher.

So I prune sometime about Christmas, I think? 

I must leave windows open to allow some insect life in then for pollination, another year.

Cheers

[Yournamehere]

Yep, cut back to your main-frame in autumn/winter keeping and tying in any new growth that you want to extend the frame.

When grapes first appear on a spring whip, cut the whip back to the fruit plus one or two leaves. This means all the growth goes into the fruit and not into producing great long leafy whips.

[Welshfred]

Cut sideshoots back to one bud too, otherwise they will take over. I cut back in winter to 2 buds, one as insurance, then choose the best as the keeper for the year when they get going.