Sunday was one of the better days of the last few weeks with some decent sunny spells and the afternoon temperature reaching a very pleasant 19.7°C.
After a rather disastrous year in the home greenhouse last year, things are doing much better this year. Sue posted a greenhouse August update here. One thing I've tried to do this year is keep our grape vine Himrod under better control. It produces an large heavy crop of sweet grapes every year but left to its own devices it will fill the greenhouse full of shoots exploring all parts of the greenhouse.
The main stem of the vine is trained along the roof of the greenhouse and the never ending new shoots and leaves can soon cut out much of the light. In hot sunny weather this can produce some useful shade but in duller damper weather it reduces much needed light. This year I was determined to keep it in check if at all possible.
The pruning process has to start early on in the season and the first worry is will the vine produce some grapes if all its new shoots are constantly cut back. As you can see we have no shortage of grapes despite my attempts to stop the vine in its tracks.
My efforts to stop the grape vine taking over haven’t been totally successful as its managed to cunningly send out some tendrils behind the tomato plants where I can’t reach them.
It’s now in need of its weekly trim. I’ll trim back all the shoots leaving a couple of leaves near the main stem of the vine. It should keep us supplied with grapes until the end of September providing we don’t get any really cold nights.
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My really vigorous grape vine has stopped producing grapes, I've no idea why. I think I shall cut it back really hard this winter. Your grapes look excellent. Are they seedless?
ReplyDeleteI cut our vine right back to the main stem each year. Looks a bit drastic when it's done even to me but it seems to work.
DeleteOur grapes are seedless. We did have a red seeded one in the greenhouse to start with but the grapes were more seed than grape.