grape – Peacock Orchard

A walk around the house

Come take a look around with us. Turkeys approve this message, so long as it comes with snacks.

Yellow sweet clover? We’ve got 30 acres of that! It’s also freakishly tall.

I finally found rubber boots for the kids. They want to wear them everywhere now.

Prince is losing his train and Ella thinks it’s hilarious to try to tickle him with the feathers.

We saved a butterfly last week!

Taking a ride to feed the babies.

Hazelnuts are on the cusp of doing well and dying. how is that possible you ask? Well excessive rain and that sweet clover that grows taller than everything else. Ugh!

White oaks are doing alright though.

Ducks still think I’m Satan.

Paw Paws are doing well!

Vetch. Love it!

We have lots of flowers popping up.

Bindweed. Super depressing amounts of it!

The duck and Prince love each other.

Sugar snap peas. I haven’t cooked a single one. They get eaten right from the pod!

Grapes are struggling a bit

Gourds are doing alright. They’re even rooting along the vine. Crazy!

This is one of the Kraters. It’s doing well!

Jiki our pyr has to come out with me to protect me from the coyotes!

We have salad!

Planting predator proof grapes

I love our property but it comes with challenges. One of those challenges is living within oil drilling country. All of us noticed a huge influx of ground animals once the oil play began. They shy away from the vibrations and seek out calmer areas. Since they are not drilling near houses, they have sought out houses. The results have been pretty devastating:

The roots of this crab apple tree were completely consumed.

I have them traveling about in my berms, which is a pretty big concern for me. I have not noticed any dead fruit trees, yet, but I’m waiting.

So when it came time to plant my very expensive grapes, I wanted no ground animal intrusion.

I had many large tree pots from big box stores sitting around at home. So I cut the bottom out of 10 of them and then cut chicken wire large enough to cover the hole.

Then I began digging. I had to dig a hole big enough to hold the pots. I placed the chicken wire in the bottom of the hole and then placed the pot inside. I then filled the sides of the hole around the pot.

Daughter was pleased with the play area I had established for her. She was happy to throw dirt into the bottom for me.

Then just fill with dirt, compost and a grape seedling. I covered it with straw mulch as a finishing touch.

I had so many problems with my grapes. As you can see here I had mold, fungus and general death. Some of them pulled through with an organic fungicide spray and a few just died.

This is one of the plants that was suffering from fungus. It pulled through.

Same plant dying back in winter.

Same plant gone dormant.

I did move all of my grapes in the fall. I moved each of them under a standard sized fruit tree. I then mulched and held the mulch down with cement rip rap.

Gardening in Winter- Indoors

Behold my propagation/seed starting winter garden. I have a lot going on. We only have 2 windows that get enough sunlight to grow plants. This is but 1 of them. What I have here is 2 Russian Pomegranates (black pots), lots of mint, Niagara grape cuttings being rooted, mulberry cuttings being rooted, Pineberry seeds that are hopefully growing, cold hardy kiwi that I most likely killed, tomato, Russian Almond (can’t see) and onion bulbs I was hoping to have go to seed before spring.

Now, allow me to break this process down.

Ebay, oh Ebay. I bought a ton of stuff off of Ebay. Most of them came in excellent shape as well.

This is a mulberry I purchased off of Ebay. I bought 3 different kinds of Mulberry. I potted this one up and stuck it in the window. It now looks like this:

It has taken off!

So have the Russian Almond bushes I have waiting in their cereal box planters

The grape cuttings are beginning to leaf out as well:

As are some of the unrooted Mulberry cuttings I’d purchased:

As you can see I have them in a sort of mini greenhouse. It is working just fine!

I haven’t taken any other pictures of my pomegranates. They have not done anything noteworthy since I got them.

I bought all of these things in mass, at once. So naturally they all arrived in the mail at the same time. This meant I had a busy evening ahead of me. Thankfully I have some very happy helpers.

Daughter is busily throwing dirt about, and occasionally getting it into a cup, while son is scarifying the hazelnut seeds for me.

Here they are. Pre-scarifying and then planted in their mini greenhouse, ready to go outside for stratification. They are outdoors now, placed in a new mini greenhouse as I broke the last one. I didn’t see any change in them. I’m hoping at least a few of them germinate. Who knows. I have a few grape seeds in there as well. I realize grape is said to be terrible to get from seed but I’m trying anyway as seen here:

I also bought some bamboo. It arrived very well packaged. And is doing quite well situated in our other available window. The great pyr tolerates many things, odd plants stuck in his food dish are just part of the package.

Here are a few pics of the mint I’m propagating. We have a lot of bare land so I have no problem sporadically planting mint about and seeing what happens.

Now for some of my odder projects. I get throw away produce from a local grocery store for my poultry. Whenever I’m sorting through and find something good I always try to see if I can save it. These carrots are part of that. They are organic carrots and I’m hoping to allow them to go to seed. They are doing marvelously. I started them in wet paper towels and when I saw enough roots I planted them into cups. I think I’ll just leave them in the cups now. I did the same with some onions. The onions are less pleased with my treatment though. I don’t know that I’ll get anything from them.