Day 354: For all of the fact that I have had some quite unusual horticultural successes (soil layering the contorted filbert comes immediately to mind), there is one area in which I have a grievous shortcoming: pruning grapes. It sounds so easy when you read about it! Grapes fruit on last year's wood, so you remove two-year, woody growth, prune this year's back to a manageable level and, as they say, Bob's yer uncle. However, when it comes to turning policy into practice, and you're out in the field with a crisp winter morning turning your ears red and your fingers into digital popsicles, identifying which is which...and harder, tracing it back through the spaghetti of vines to where it attaches to the main trunk...presents an altogether different prospect. I have had one or two good yields following my tender ministrations over the 35 years of this plant's life, but for the most part, I get only a handful of bunches or none, depending on who gets there first after the sugar sets, me or the jaybirds. In fact, one year I was expecting to pick roughly ten pounds based on what was on the vine before bedtime, but the following morning, I discovered the jays had cleaned me out right down to the last grape. We've had a few nippy nights, and I've been sneaking single-grape tastes for a couple of days now. My sample grape this morning was sweet enough for me, so I harvested the four small bunches which were the only fruit to develop this year. One bunch was already fragile, a good sign that they were ripe because the grapes dropped from their stems into my bowl when I bumped the cluster. I have just enough for a snack, although there may be a few upset jaybirds when they try to find their long-anticipated lunch.
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