The past day or two have been WINDY in central PA - so much so, our grape arbor is history. The three poles on the eastern side all broke off at the ground. It's obvious they were rotted through after 15 years. But I'm none too disappointed, except for losing a nice perch for the bluebirds, Baltimore orioles, mockingbirds, and my mother's peacocks. I believe the birds loved the arbor more than myself. I've been growing, well, trying to grow, 5 grape vines for the past 15 years. Its not an easy task to grow organic grapes without any dormant oil spray or fungicides. The seedless grapes were never much success and the seeded grapes were ok, but they have seeds which is a huge pain in the you-know-what. One year I made and froze grape juice and grape jelly which was nice, but yet another pain-in-the-you-know-what and I vowed it wasn't worth the trouble. (If you've never harvested and used grapes, the pain-in-the-you-know-what is the grape juice spritzed all over your kitchen, and the messy grape pulp/seed mess you get as a result). This winter, I toyed with the idea of tearing out the grapes to expand the garden and I decided I'll just let mother nature takes its course on the grapes -- and she came through! The only other disappointment is a place for the hops to grow. Our annual hops vine would twine up and out the wire put in place for the grapes (yes, it consumed one of the grape vines and choked it to death!). I'll have to figure that one out. Ding Dong, the grapes are dead!
3 comments:
That's a shame about the arbor. So sorry. I was shocked that the wooden frame with chicken wire over top of my raised bed blew off and 6 feet away. And then the thistle feeder blew off the tree and this morning the poor finches look all confused.
Poor birdies! That was some powerful wind.
My garden partner has a grape arbor. I don't think he's ever gotten more than a handful or two of grapes from it but you're right, the birds love it.
Judy
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