Once again, this doesn’t appear to be the year to make wine from our grapes. The birds beat us to the fruit.

About two weeks ago, I saw some evidence of bird damage and rather naively thought there were plenty of grapes for everyone. I also thought that netting the rows would be a large expense and massive time-suck. Ordering netting would take a while to arrive and who knows what might happen in the between.

So, I did nothing. Actually, I hoped a little. But admittedly not with all my heart, since I honestly wasn’t looking forward to the de-stemming and washing and crushing.  We’ve been talking about scaling back the rows of vines so that they would be more manageable. “Know your limits” – that’s what grandma used to say. Not my grandma, but I’m sure someone’s grandma said that. I think we could better handle about five rows (currently have eleven). With five rows, I could potentially install a simple deer fence around the whole vineyard and bird netting could go up and over the top of the deer fence… at least then we’d only have frost, bugs and fungus to contend with.

The grapevines need to be pruned fairly soon. Hope we don’t see another late frost this year.

I don’t like to think of myself as a half-asser – just get the job done kind of guy, so I had all kinds of justifications on why I thought planting the endposts for the trellis system more or less verticle would work. My rows were way shorter than the rows in the books. My posts were bigger and planted nice and deep (3 feet). My earth anchors were strong and the black paint made them look even tougher. But when I began adding my trellis wire, I slowly discovered these justifications were a bunch of crap. My endposts were not doing their job. As I tighted the wires, the posts pulled in and the wires never seemed to tighten. So after completing three rows of loose wire, I finally came to the conclusion I needed to fix things.

I went back to the books. According to the experts, there were two options: lean the endposts back to a 60° angel or insert another post with horizontal post between (H post construction). The first option seemed a whole lot easier, and according to the books, H posts are recommended for rows longer than 100ft. Our rows are about 70ft on a good day. I also found sources suggesting the anchor wires should be doubled up, and they do indeed feel much stronger and tighter this way.

Digging behind the endposts is a little awkward, but it’s doable. The worst part of constructing this trellis system is the amount of time it takes. It takes me over an hour to complete a single row. Only six more rows to go.

We gots lots of mulch. We were buying mulch by the truck load for about $8.50/yard from Cedar Rapids compost facility. It’s nice stuff. Wood chips. Very dense. Then we decided we would need much more mulch much faster so we bought two truck-loads from Belle Plaine (Pierce Lumber Inc). They were super kind enough to arrange delivery. It’s basswood – a bit stringy, but smells great! We haven’t found anything online that says basswood is bad for grapes, so we hope it will be okay. Jake seems to like it.