Vineyard Comes to Life

Tim and I had a very exciting weekend at the farm! After spending nearly a year reading about what's involved in starting a vineyard, Tim attending OSU's Grape Management Course, and many, many, many hours on the Internet researching suppliers and supplies, our vineyard came to life this weekend!

60 Blackberries with an irrigation tube

In addition to the 650 grape vines we had ordered from Double A Vineyards in NY State, we had also ordered 60 blackberry bushes, which we planted right away. Since blackberries require a trellis to grow, we planted the blackberries in one of the rows with the end posts. The grape vines are mostly waiting until next weekend, for the Festival.

We had planted 68 fruit and nut trees in November. Tim got the drip-irrigation system finished up this weekend to the orchard: 1800 feet of pipes for the orchard. Each tree gets its own emitter.

An intersection in the irrigation system in the orchard

Tim installs an emitter in the tubing for a tree in the orchard.

You are looking at an orchard, but the trees are just sticks at this point (many with leaves or buds), so all you can see at first glance is the irrigation tubing.

On Sunday, we got a row of Traminette grapes,a hybrid of Gewurztraminer and Johannes Sayve, planted. As you can see, they all have blue "grow tubes" around them, which forces them to grow straight up (saving us the trouble of training them) and also keeps critters away.

Our first row of grape vines with blue grow tubes protecting the grapes.

Tim assembles grow tubes

It has been a long road of planning, study, and preparation, and it is very exciting to have some grapes in the ground. We can't wait for the Grape-Planting Festival next weekend! With the help of our volunteers and family, we will plant 10 more rows. To give you an idea, one row makes 200-300 bottles of wine!

We still have room for a few more volunteers, if you want to come help. Let me know! alexis@forbiddenfruitsfarm.com.