Tuesday, July 02, 2013

The grapes are in flower

The vines have started to take off and now the flowers are open. Soon we'll see little bunches of grapes out there. The growers have been spraying to keep mold from establishing itself on the leaves. Pretty soon they'll be out there cutting the vines back to channel growth and sunshine to the emerging grape bunches.

Grape flowers are not very big and not particularly pretty. But the grapes will be great!

It's been warm and dry for the past few days and I've had to water the vegetable garden. I'm still using water collected from the roof runoff (it's free!), but that's just about gone and soon I'll have to use the hose. That's not so free.

6 comments:

  1. we collect rainwater in a rain barrel at our house; spouse uses it to water his tomato/pepper plants and shrubs. free is good!

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  2. We now do the rainwater collection thing. Ours fills us super fast. We should get a larger container, I think.

    Happy for you to have some warm weather!

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  3. These vines look really healthy and vibrant! The blooms look delicate.
    Do you have some green vineyards that are in your view from the house - or only the vineyard that will be replaced?

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  4. Is water expensive in your area?

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  5. I like to see the seasons change: your 'grape calendar' is one of my favorites now.

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  6. anne marie, yes, this is definitely a case of free is good!

    judy, one of my containers sprung a leak, so now I have two smaller ones. We'll see how it goes.

    mary, we have a huge swath of vineyard parcels visible from the west windows. The one that's getting replaced is only a small parcel among many.

    starman, that depends on your definition of expensive... But we pay our sewer bill as a function of how much water we use, whether or not it goes down the drain, so using rainwater for the garden helps minimize the cost of water.

    michael, that's a good idea for a winter project: I should actually do a formal grape calender!

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