Sunday, October 24, 2010

Getting Through the Winter/Propagating Grapes

It's supposed to snow.

Yesterday, I sat in the garage loading sliced and peeled apples into jars, and admitted to my Mister, that canning apples (and grape juice) made it finally feel like fall.

If it snows, that means the garden will freeze soon, and there won't be any more fresh tomatoes. I like fall, with the leaves changing color, and the garden in full swing. I like eating squash. I don't really like winter. The only redeeming thing about winter is playing in freshly fallen snow, and drinking tea or hot chocolate by a fire. I'd be good if winter was condensed a bit and we had a week around christmas time where it snowed, and no one had to go to work or school, and we could play and wrap up in blankets around the fire. Then it could be spring again and I could start a new garden.

Since gardening is my main hobby, winter gets a little old fast. This year to get me through, I'm planning on bringing a cherry tomato plant indoors and see how long I can keep it going, as well as a couple of regular tomato plants we have growing in the green house already.  We'll also do indoor lettuce again, they were a little leggy last year, but it was fun to have fresh home grown lettuce in december.

The thing I'm most excited about is propagating some grape vines. My parents house, where we are living was build around 1890. There are grape vines that we're not quite sure how long they've been around, but know that they were here before my parents got married. My mom says they're called agwumps. They make the best grape juice. Concord grapes are nothing in comparison. They grow along the driveway, and when we build our new house, we may not have as easy access to them (not to mention that when my parents get home from Peru, the might want to use the grapes themselves), so we're going to take cuttings to plant in our own yard. I got the instructions from this website.  It looks pretty easy.  Cutting dried stems with three or four buds, dipping them in rooting hormone, and planting them in potting soil and repotting in individual pots as they get bigger.  The website says that by spring when it's time to plant them outdoors, they should be around 6 feet tall.

3 comments:

Stephen said...

Thanks. I had grapes at our last house and am trying to establish vines at the new one now.

Thanks.

wordsfromhome said...

Actually the house dates from 1890.
How many quarts of juice did you get this year? Or did you run out of bottles before you ran out of grapes?

Alice said...

I think we did 15 or 16 gallons of juice. (we meaning mostly Kyle- Baby E wants to be held all the time so it's hard to be very helpful.)

There are a few feet left of unpicked vines. We still have jars, but I'm not sure if we'll do anymore.

We did 20 quarts of pie apples on saturday. We didn't do applesauce, we were too tired.

(I also shredded the giant zucchini that the neighbor gave us and put it in the freezer for zucchini breads/cakes.)