Pruning Our Concord Grape Vine

Too much vegetative growth and lower grape yield
can be the result of not pruning your grape vine enough.
Photo by Brad Sylvester, copyright 2011. Do not copy.

This year our Concord Grape vine, now about 3 years old, did really well. It produced 7 pounds of grapes that we harvested, plus those eaten by the chipmunks. Those grapes, in turn, yielded just about 7 liters of wine which is aging peacefully on a shelf. It will sit for at least a year before we open the first bottle and see how we've done with the first batch from our own grapes.

The knock on Concord grape wine is that it tends to be highly acidic and can be a bit harsh on the palate. There are steps that can be taken to minimize this or correct it entirely, but we made a very basic batch without taking any of those steps this year. I'll taste it next year just before preparing next season's batch and decide then whether to make alterations to the basic approach we took this year.

Meanwhile, it is the end of the season and although it has been unseasonably warm (the forsythia is blooming again for the second time since September), the growing season is over and it is time to prune the grape vine. This should only be done once it drops its leaves and is definitely shut down for the winter.

Grape vines should be pruned very heavily. I am training mine to weave in and around the spindles of our back deck railing so that it will look as though we have a living green railing next year and beyond, so I'll leave a little more of the vine structure this year for shaping.

For a really good guide to pruning grapes, check out this page from Ohio State University's Extension Service.

Most people tend to either neglect pruning their grape vines altogether or prune far too lightly. The result of under pruning is that the grape vine has so many branches and leaves that it has to spend too much energy building and maintaining that vegetative growth that the yield of fruit suffers. Let's face it, the main point of having a grape vine is to produce grapes, so pruning for maximum fruit yield should be an important part of your pre-winter grape vine maintenance.

One way to determine if your pruning regimen is working is to weigh your grapes each year. If your total harvest starts dropping and there was no unusual cause that you can identify (very bad weather, disease, etc.), then you may want to revisit the way you're pruning the vine.

Next spring we are planning to add another variety of grape vine as well. We are looking for a good hardy vine and will probably look at those grape varieties that grow well in upstate New York as the winter's are similar there. We'd like to get a sweeter grape that is better for eating or producing a more palatable sweet wine. I'll keep you informed as we make the decision on which variety we get. Whichever it is, we'll expect very few grapes the first year after planting as the plant concentrates on establishing itself rather than fruiting.

---------

Read my blog entry on the Grape Tumid Gallmaker, an insect that creates unusual growths on the vine tendrils or grape stems.

Putting up Green Beans by Blanching and Freezing Them

"Green beans are one of most prolific vegetable plants in my garden, year after year. Once the plants start producing, they'll keep producing green beans all season long. The pole bean varieties will continue growing and actually increase their production over time as the plant continues to get bigger and bigger. With just six pole bean plants in my garden, I am picking them at least two days out of three and getting more than my wife and I can eat each time we pick." So what do we do? We blanch and freeze the excess and enjoy green beans all year round.

Read more about how to optimize production of green beans and blanch and freeze them here.

Exotic pets?

I like animals. I have two dogs, a cat and a yard full of chickens. I understand the appeal of keeping exotic animals as pets, whether its a giant snake or a money swinging from the rafters of your house. However, increasingly the animals used as exotic pets are becoming endangered or threatened in their own natural habitats because of illegal poaching fueled by the money involved in the buying and selling of exotic animals.

Read more about Parrot Poaching in Jamaica here.

Poaching can devastate entire ecosystems by removing or dramatically reducing the populations of key species from the food chain. Furthermore, it can actually have the opposite effect as people grow tired of caring for their exotic pets and release them into the wild in parts of the world where they are not native. These exotic pets, if the environment is suitable, can multiply and become a nuisance invasive species in thes areas.

One example of this is the growing population of wild Burmese pythons living in the Florida Everglades says National Geographic. These snaes are imported into the United States by the hundreds of thousands. Often, they grow too large for their owners to handle safely and are released or they may escape.

Burmese pythons are now sharing space at the top of the Everglades food chain with the alligator. In some cases, pythons are even killing alligators. These are very big, and very mean snakes. They also feed on birds and bird eggs putting many of the rare bird species in the everglades at risk from this newly introduced, but rapidly multiplying predator.

While it's easy to see the havoc that top predators can do when introduced to a new ecosystem, even seemingly harmless animals can have unintended consequences and be very harmful to local species when wrecklessly introduced.

If you want to see and learn about these exotic animals, visit a local zoo that aids in preserving rare species. During a recent trip to the York Zoo in Maine, I too some photos of the capybara. Click here to view photos that I took of the capybara, the world's largest rodent which is native to South and Central America. Upon retunring home, I was surprised to discover that even this animal is now being kept as pets in the United States.

Spring planting

After a week or two of rain and cold temperatures, known in New England as Mud Season, we are now into full summer with 80 degree temperatures. Technically it's not summer for another month, but close enough. Tomatoes that are hardened off (gradullay accustomed to the harsh UV of the sun and the temperature extremes of night and day) can be planted outdoors now with almost no risk of frost kill.

Already growing in our gardens outdoors are:
strawberries (blossoms forming now)
Concord grapes (flower bud clusters forming -lots of them!)
apples (several varieties- blossoms fading now)
asparagus (We've already harvested two batches this spring.)
chives (ready to harvest)
garlic (from outdoor overwintered bulbs)
leeks (second year for seed)
chocolate mint
cilantro (tender to frost, but it self-seeded from last year and I guess it knows when it's safe to start growing)
lemon thyme (ready to harvest)
oregano (ready to harvest)
lovage (ready to harvest)
wintergreen (growing wild throughout our forest)
rosemary (freshly planted)
blackberries
garlic chives (ready to harvest)
(I had also planted Jerusalem artichokes, but they were eaten by moles (or voles or some other such little burrowing beastie)

Today, May 26th, I planted:
red cabbage
summer squash (yellow straight-neck)
cucumbers (Marketmore)
fennel
pickling cucumbers
tomatoes (roma, brandywine red, and another indeterminate heirloom variety whose name escapes me at the moment)

In the house I have:
1 large brandywine red tomato which I plant to grow throuhg the fall and into winter as long as I can keep it healthy and fruiting
6 miscellaneous miniature hot pepper (chili) plants in an Aerogarden
two freshly cloned brandywine red tomato plants

Those are the edilbes that we have growing at present. I'll add more soon, beets, green beans and others to be determined.

Bartering turkey for rabbits

In addition to vegetable from our gardens, we raise both chickens and turkeys for eggs and meat. Recently, we traded with another family we know. We gave them a dressed turkey a few weeks ago, and today they gave us the first of two dressed rabbits. That way we both end up with a wider variety of locally grown food than we would if we only ate what we raised ourselves.

We are lucky to live in a rural area where there are many small farms, and farmers' markets at least four days a week with easy driving distance, so we have access to a wide variety of localy grown produce and other food products. Bartering, however, lets us trade something we have in abundance with someone else in a similar circumstance with different commodities.

At any rate, we are looking forward to our rabbit dinner. I was surprised to see how big the rabbit is, it has much more meat than I thought it would. The only other dressed rabbit i had seen up close was a wild rabbit from a hunter about 30 years ago. It was much thinner and smaller than the domestic meat rabbit which we just received.

Food Supply Safety: Exploding Melons

This article about exploding melons in China points out another reason to try to grow as much of your own food as possible and to buy the rest from trusted, preferably local sources. In many countries laws governing which chemicals can be used on food crops or even livestock intended for human consumption are very lax. Even if such rules are in place, enforcement is often spotty at best.

In the case of this specific example, farmers in China were adding excessive amounts of forchlorfenuron on their watermelon crops. This chemical is designed to make the fruit grow faster, rapidly expanding its size and weight. For crops sold by the pound, this can mean additional profit for the farmer.

While forchlorfenuron is used in the United Stated for certain fruits such as kiwi and grapes, amounts are regulated. In China, it seems, at least some farmers got the idea that if a little is good, more is better. While much of the fruit so treated has burst and become worthless, thanks in part to the heavy rains that magnified the effect of the chemical causing the melons to grow so quickly that the rinds split open and ruined the crops in the field, different weather conditions could have resulted in a different outcome.

Here are the USDA safety findings for forchlorfenuron.  Studies on animals show that it can result in low body weight, low birth weight, and some significant kidney problems in animals. No comprehensive human tests have been conducted. It's not clear how much of the chemical was being used in China or what concentrations were found int he flesh of the fruit. So there is no way of knowing how the dosage compares to that used in the animal tests.

This, unfortunately, is not the only case of tainted food supplies from China and other sources. Melamine has been found in milk, eggs, baby formula and other food products in China. In one famous case, a supplier was even marketing the toxic by-product of plastic manufacture as a protein content enhancement to food processors. Because a chemical in it mimics one tested for in protein tests, it essentially caused a false positive result in protein testing for foods.

Only a very small percentage of food entering the United States (or even food produced within the United States) is ever tested for these kinds of contaminants. As a consumer, you simply can't know what's in most of the food you eat if you buy food produced in large commercial operations, especially those from regions where the existence or effectiveness regulations and oversight is dubious, at best. If, however, you grow your own food, you are in control of what goes in it. If you buy from local farms, you can often actually visit them as see their operations or at least talk to someone from that farm and ask questions abotu their practices.

Eating local foods, gardening and raisng your own food are not just good for the environment, they can protect you, individually, from the risk of dangerous chemical contaminants that may be added to the food supply without your knowledge or consent.

Chicken Breeds: Research First!

Before anyone steps into the ongoing learning process of becoming a backyard chicken owner, it is absolutely imperative that they do a little research first. After you have acquired a basic understanding of what it takes to raise happy, healthy chickens, you need to research chicken breeds.

I got a phone call from a complete stranger the other day that highlights why researching chicken breeds before buying them is so important. This woman called me in desperation. She had an assortment of different chicken breeds including Cornish X chickens that she acquired at the beginning of April this year, about 7 weeks ago.

She was nearly frantic about the Cornish X chickens. She told me, as I could have guessed, that they were much, much larger than the other breeds of chickens she had acquired at the same time. They were not active like the others, and she feared for their health after recently reading that Cornish X left to continue growing are prone to severe leg injuries and even heart problems because they have been bred to gain weight faster than ordinary chickens and to achieve a total weight far in excess of what most other breeds can ever reach. This strains the ability of their legs to hold them up and strains their hearts and other organs which have to deal with their rapid growth and very high body fat content.

She said that here 7 week old Cornish X birds were already about ten pounds in body weight. For most chickens, adult weight is less than that. She said she recently read about the potential for these birds to have health issues and wanted to sell them to someone who would use them for meat birds. She said she was constitutionally unable to butcher the chickens herself, even though she knew it was probably the most humane thing she could do for these particular birds.

Lest you think I am overstating the case, let me tell you that I have seen cases where owners of Cornish X chickens have let them get to 10-12 weeks of age. A significant percentage of these birds develop severe and painful leg problems. These problems include legs actually breaking under the bird's own weight and other debilitating structural injuries. Chickens are simply not engineered to get that big. While a careful feeding regimen can slow their growth and postpone some of these health issues, that's only a delaying tactic.

I could not take the chickens off her hands because I am using a strict quarantine policy now. In my first year of chicken keeping, I did add adult chickens from other flocks to my flock. In one case, after adding some new birds, I had a couple of them die mysteriously exhibiting symptoms of a contagious poultry disease. I could have lost my entire flock and ended up with the pathogens present in my soil for any future chickens I raised. Fortunately, that wasn't the case and the rest of the flock is doing fine. In any case, I resolved that I would not risk bringing in chickens from any other flock again. I simply can't know their health or the conditions under which they were raised. The risk to the health of the rest of my birds is just too high.

The woman who called me wanted to know how to sell her Cornish X broiler chickens to someone who would butcher them humanely for food. I suggested the Farm & Garden section of Craigslist. It is quite common to see chickens of various ages available for sale there and most buyers are fairly knowledgeable.

Taking the responsibility of raising and caring for any animal whether it is a family pet or a farm animal ultimately intended for the dinner table should not be taken lightly. Just as you wouldn't get a dog without knowing if it were a pit bull or a Chihuahua, you shouldn't acquire chickens or any other animal without first researching the specific breed so that you fully understand its needs and basic characteristics.

Cornish X (also called Cornish Cross) chickens are a hybrid breed specifically designed to be used for meat. They grow extremely fast and are not built to last into adulthood. While it is possible for Cornish X chickens to live into adulthood if raised under the right conditions, it generally requires special care from an experienced chicken owner who knows the specific inherent liabilities of the breed.