Over the past two seasons, I’ve had two groups of vines die out almost completely. One of Sabrevois and the other a group of Foch. Mysteriously, another row of Foch nearby have survived and are doing pretty well. Anyway, I just noticed one tiny Sabrevois vine and one tiny Foch vine sprouting up in the rows where I didn’t think any were alive. This was a nice surprise and something I’ll need to keep an eye on the rest of the season to see if I can nurse them back to full vine size.
I’m always amazed each year when the summer temperatures start heating up into the low 80’s (and higher). It’s during these days, that grapevines grow like crazy. Not unlike the rates of growth seen in cornfields when you can actually ‘hear’ the corn grow. The thing is, the grapevines grow even faster than corn does in this nice weather.
In the past week, we’ve had multiple episodes of soaking rain followed by warm and muggy weather. I’m overdue for posting photo updates. Some of the vines have put on 2-3 feet of growth since last Sunday.
It’s been awhile since I last posted about the status of the cuttings I started earlier this spring. Well, all has gone pretty well. I ended up with 6 cuttings that had callused and had started rooting. I moved them to biodegradeable pots with potting soil. Initially I was concerned as it appear that most of them weren’t progressing since the move to potting soil. But with some patience and frequent watering, I ended up with 4 of the 6 going gangbusters in their pots. Just last week, I put them out in the vineyard with the rest of the Prairie Stars. Just for kicks, I also planted the cuttings that didn’t appear to be doing anything. Now I think one of those ones is starting to show signs of life. So all told, I think I have 5 viable Prairie Star plants as a result of my efforts.
Here are the Prairie Star cuttings in their boxes.
Prairie Star cutting with new roots
If you’ve tried visiting grapelog.com or bluedoorvineyard.com in the last few weeks, you probably noticed that the site was gone. I took it down on purpose due to an attack that had taken place on my site. Anytime someone would visit my site – the rogue code would cause their browser to redirect to one of several malware sites from which it was possible to automatically download a virus to your pc. I know, because it happened to me!
So I’ve learned a lesson the hard way and I hope that by taking my site offline I was able to minimize the impact to those of you that are regular visitors to my site. Thanks for your patience and understanding!
Don
PS: send me an e-mail if you’d like to hear the gory details of how the attack happened – don@bluedoorvineyard.com.
After noticing the small roots that had formed on all of my Prairie Star cuttings, I potted the vines in paper/cardboard tubes. I managed to get 6 of 6 vines to root. Now I’m waiting on some others…only time will tell. I will be posting pictures soon.