Amen to that! May we all grow stronger daily as part of the Vine!

Hey Abid! Yes, the goats definitely loved those snacks!

Hey Daz! It's funny, every turn of the season I try to imagine what you're up to on the other side of the world opposite of us!

Hey Chet! Yes, the goats chew through everything, vines and all. It's like candy for them!

Glad to hear it. Sometimes we get used to how special it is to have a place like this we can call home!

The animals really do enjoy these. The goats in particular, they act like it's crack when we come over to them with a handful!

I'm really surprised with that Concord as well. That's the grape I remember harvesting when I visited family up in Oregon!

Thanks!

One of my pruning mentors always talked about getting more comfortable with the amount to remove as you gained more experience with it. After 12 years of this it is much easier I must say. Oh and thanks for the kind words. We try to get us much info into these as we can, so it's worth the viewing time!

Great suggestions. I think I'll have to find a video detailing what you're describing! Any suggestions?

@@EdgeofNowhereFarm kzfaq.info/get/bejne/odCildihqdabqWQ.htmlsi=J89mWQsJq8lYW-Z9&t=29 here's one of ours that shows more or less how it looks, we now start the catch wires one pair just 6" below the cordon wire and another pair 6" above the cordon wire at the beginning of the season and lift each pair once to get us up to the top. We also tend to let them sprawl more to the sides than in the past. 3k feet in elevation plus same temps as y'all means we can "cook" the fruit with too much sun pretty easily!

@@texasvinecountry119 thank you. I'll take a look!

Ah yes, your Flame grapevines should be growing even more vigorous than these cab vines you're seeing here. We're on our second round of pruning on the Flame vines right now and as you're seeing, the clusters are starting to get close! Usually those are our first grapes to harvest in June!

Ask and yes shall receive. I'll link to a video we shot on that when these went up a few years ago; kzfaq.info/get/bejne/Z5ycf6h60bW8lXk.html

Glad you enjoyed this one and found it useful!

Glad to hear they're coming in strong Pam. Just a little TLC makes all the difference sometimes!

@@EdgeofNowhereFarm , along with a knowledgeable person like you for input. No telling where they would be without you guys helping me.

This is the first year we're really trimming back the heavy growth leading up to harvest, so we'll have to see how strong the effect is on the fruit. The key will be that initial specific gravity read when we go to make that wine. Oh and we are doing this same thing with all of the varieties, so Flame, Thompson, Monukka, Syrah and Zin along with the Cab. We do notice the majority of the fruit growth is in that first 12 - 24". The cab is always especially low on that new growth.

It sounds like you have a solid plan for those vines. We probably could do this a bit earlier in the growth period, but as you mentioned the wind is a big problem for us here. You're correct, we still can go back through and do some additional thinning. Once we're in the "golden years" for our vines (typically at year 4 and beyond) we'll start thinning a bit heavier. The cab especially needs to be thinned a bit heavier I believe.

Teşekkürler Mesut. Türkiye'de her şeyin yolunda olmasını diliyorum!

Hey George. We try to limit how much of that plastic tape we use, because it tends to wind up everywhere. Plus it's a bit easier to pull vines when we get to pruning. For the most part they stay in place. I know you have a lot of experience with this, so how many clusters did you usually come down to per vine when you guys were thinning in the commercial vineyards? I don't think we're going to thin further this year, but next year the vines are 4 years old and should start hitting their stride, so we're going to really focus on quality vs quantity.

Hey, Duane, George here. I have only worked at one small commercial vineyard so I am not an expert by any means. One cluster per shoot seems to be the goal for vinifera. You are spur pruning, right? I’ll go back and look at some of your pruning videos.

@@glleon80517 these are spur pruned, yes. We have a mix of both cane and spur pruned vines though.

❤️🍷

It's funny, because we have a few viewers who have worked commercial vineyards and given us some great advice, but sometimes the advice contradicts one to the other! Eventually we'll have to figure out something more permanent for the ducks/geese. We're still trying to decide whether or not the ducks will remain part of the farm long term. The eggs are delicious, but they don't sell well and they lay very inconsistently. For the most part they're a drain on the farm more than a benefit. The geese on the other hand can remail as guardians for the chickens and they can actually go with very little water. Again, still trying to figure that out.

Hang in there. I'm sure there will be more to come!

Probably, but it's just not something we're trying to add to the to-do list! Technically they root better from hard wood cuttings taken from the vines when they're dormant. They root just like fig or mulberry cuttings, so you can use the fig-pop method or just stick a bunch of cuttings into a pot of soil and see which ones take!

We get well above that temp and don't cover the vines. Grapevines do best in full, blazing sun. Now, you can leave the vines growing a bit longer to help shade the area around the trunk. You'll also want to make sure you're irrigating enough. These vines are getting about 12 gallons once/week right now.

I suppose you could do that to discourage growth vertically and try to encourage it to send out side shoots, but we prefer to prune during the season to feed our goats.

The cabernet that you see here can definitely use some cluster thinning, but we won't do additional thinning on those until these vines hit their "golden years" (year 4 and beyond). That's when they have optimal production. At that point we'll keep no more than 2 clusters per shoot. For now we're being a bit greedy to ensure we have plenty of grapes for wine making this summer. 😉🍷

Yes, we do the same thing with the Thompson grapes here on the farm. All grapevines really, but some are more aggressive than others and Thompson can be VERY aggressive with their growth!

Cool. Yeah, their little vine 'arms' are waiving all over the place right now. It feels like they grow a foot overnight XD Thanks so much.

They eat just about everything, but it's mostly a mix of corn and pig feed...with the occasional table scrap and of course greens whenever we can!

@@EdgeofNowhereFarm that is TRUE ORGANIC 💯

It's hard to tell, but we only work before 9am in the morning, so we prefer to get that sunshine for Vitamin D production. If we're out and about later than that we don the hats. 😉

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No, we don't put anything on the vines or grapes, so I wouldn't be able to advise you there. Right now we're watering once/week and each vine is getting about 12 gallons via drip irrigation.

We always thin our vines until year 2, but most varieties will attempt fruiting very early on. Oh and San Diego would have FANTASTIC weather for grapes. Not sure how far inland you are, but if you're usually socked in with May gray and June gloom you'll want to be extra careful to thin out the leaves to give plenty of sunlight into those clusters as they ripen. 😉

@@EdgeofNowhereFarmAppreciate your swift response, my house is about 3 miles from the ocean, near Torrey Pines and Del Mar.

@@KheamHem ah ok. So you'll definitely want to do all you can to maximize that sunlight!

May and June Gloom are the two best months to start planting I believe because starting in July it will get hot during the day and cools down during night time. I don’t have a large back yard or anything but I enjoy seeing the plants grow and reaping the harvest.

We haven't had the need to do so recently, but we have netted the whole vines with bird netting in the past. One of the many advantages to this trellising as it's easy to cover the whole row with bird netting if needed.

If we had the time I would love to get some of that experience. In the meantime, what should we be doing differently?

@@EdgeofNowhereFarm there are clips that attach to the posts, you lower the wires during dormant, winter pruning time, then as you need to tuck you raise them, then hedge trim to keep them from being a out of control forest, them keep the SW side shaded, leaf pull on the SE side, the sunlight creates the Brix, also the leaves and sun create nutrients to travel up and down the plant structure, healthy plants create size, varieties are limited by genetics re size, bunch size is controlled by the nutrient stores in the roots during dormant, so for help with bunch size do a foliar after harvest, and fertiligate once or twice during winter, also in our AZ soil, as in high PH do a few heavy PH 5 waterings to flush the salts, bicarbonate away from rooting zones, AZ water, California, arid areas all have high salts, bicarbonate content, it a science that we deal with, grapes absolutely hate bicarbonate. Lots of arid farms that irrigate regularly use Sulphur burners , flushes salts, bicarbonate, not sure if you've noticed a slow decline after several years, and heavy manuring be it cover crops, animal manure, they add to salts, ist why we have Calichi, calcium, salts, lack of flushing water, then poor drainage causing Pytophra, root rot. I am looking for parts to weld up a sulphur burner, as it's hard to get 99% acid. Powder is cheap. So is soil sampling. But it's needed long term, plant diet, as human diet is critical for long term health, at least with soil we can heal it, our bodies aren't as forgiving. I'm looking out over thousands of acres of dead wine grapes, Jan. frost after plants were waking up. Sadly no plants available this year to replant.And areas aren't grape friendly due to we bottom lands, like over watering our AZ clay.

@@EdgeofNowhereFarm look up JR clips for t posts, that's what they use for lowering the trellis wires, wood posts one nail to the post, are a plastic clip style.