They say gardening is wonderful and every time I publish a gardening blog with photos of what we have in the garden, I get a lot of nice comments, people envying me in a good way, for having the possibility to grow fruits and veggies. Indeed, it is nice to grow your own food and healthy too, if you do it right. However, gardening has a side that is never shown, or not many speak of.
Last weekend was harvest time for the raspberries, gooseberries and currants. These fruits ripe pretty much the same time and need your attention when it's time. There's no postponing, procrastinating as otherwise you can kiss the harvest goodbye. So I spent all weekend harvesting, cleaning, washing and cooking the fruits. Would have been nice to have some rest, but there was no time for such luxury. Now we have 64 jars of jam (currant and gooseberry mix). The raspberries are frozen at the moment as the process of ripe is long, so we're collecting every day or every other day what is ripe and keeping it in the freezer, to be processed at a later time.
After the fruit harvest was finished, I had to attend the vine. This cheeky creature is growing like crazy and doesn't have any intention to stop.
To understand what I want to show you here, let me tell you a little bit about how you take care of the vine. Every spring you need to decide which fruit branch you want to keep and which has to go. The vine, like any other plant is growing in every direction, but that doesn't mean it benefits your purpose. So keeping those that will be bearing fruits is important, the rest can go. Then after flowering, when the grapes start to appear, another trimming is in order. Don't ask me why, but I was taught to keel two nods (this is definitely not the technical term for it, but have no clue what it is called) and then cut the rest. I call nods those parts, where you see the leaves growing. Cutting the rest after the bunch of grapes is necessary. If you keep the branches growing, you get a jungle and instead of feeding the grapes with important nutrients, you feed leaves and branches.
Here you can see, the branch was cut once, at the beginning of spring, but mother nature is sneaky, the new branch is growing already. No matter how cute these leaves are, they need to go.
There's a trick I use to find these new shoots. Maybe it's not clearly visible on the photo, but these new shoots are very light green, a nice color by the way, but there's a contrast, compared to the old leaves, so it's easy to find them.
Here you can see that branch is growing and it's not needed at all. These new shoots will never have fruits.
This is what I call jungle 😁. You can't really see what's there, apart from a bunch of leaves.
Sometimes the situation gets out of hand and branches grow like crazy.
So that's something you have to do all season as mother nature never stops. You get rid of one and the other is growing already. For me this is a lot of fun, although sometimes I could use that time to do something else, but the work needs to be done.
If you look at this photo, this is not a jungle anymore, the grapes are visible to you and they are visible to the sun rays too, which is the main idea. The more sunlight they get, the faster they grow and ripe. This is why, at the end of September, when the growing period is over, I trim the leaves to give them more sunlight. This is something I have learnt from watching an Italian channel and I'm really proud of it as it helps a lot. It took me some time to convince my dad as he's old school and not really keen of accepting change, but he has seen the benefits, so he's ok with it now.
This is the end goal. This is what you want to grow, not leaves. Again, I'm not an expert, not even a connoisseur in this regard, but what we do makes sense and have results.
This is from last year, a type of grapes that is similar to muscat, very sweet and nice flavor, but needs sunlight to ripe.
Another job that is not spectacular, nor fun is cleaning. Yes, sometimes cleaning is needed. What you see on the photo might look like a mess, but it's the onion flower, that was already dry at the time of the photo. This is an ornamental flower, we have these just for fun, so the yard to look good.
This is how the flower looks like, I just haven't been able to figure out how the coloring works 😂. Yeah, illiterate, I admit. So I don't know if it's green first, then it turns purple. Most likely, but I'm never there to witness the whole process.
So I had to cut those dry part off, but the good thing in this was that the whole thing went into the compost bin and it's getting recycled. I love composting as it has a number of benefits.
So yeah, those who think gardening is all about harvesting lovely tomatoes, cucumbers, cherries and strawberries, it's not just. There are a lot of works that need to be done and the list never ends :)
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These grapes very nice looking and I didn't know that there different kinds of varieties in terms of colours. Actually, in the tropics here, grapes aren't grown here. I don't think they survive. Thanks for your good work.
The variety of grapes existing is endless. You can't even imagine how many types are there.
Your plants are great in the garden but unfortunately in the tropics it is very difficult to bear fruit if you plant these types of raspberry plants, these gooseberries, sometimes they grow but will never bear fruit all year round, these are really extraordinary plants.
No worries as we don't have those tropical fruits you have there. I'm always saying I grow the tropical fruits in the grocery store or the supermarket 😂
We have four seasons and winter can be tough sometimes, these tropical plants would not survive.
Hello dear friend @erikah good afternoon
I have had a garden for many years, more than half of my life I have grown my food, and I know what you are saying, everything that needs to be done after harvesting to store and keep what we produce in good condition
I have read your harvest post and you have done a great job
I always wanted to have grape plants, but I must tell you that I did not know that I had a lot of work to keep the plant in good growth.
I appreciate you sharing this knowledge and experience.
have a beautiful afternoon
Hello again @jlufer.
If you had a garden for so many years, then you understand what I mean for sure.
Grapes need a lot of attention and some species or types are very sensitive as well to diseases. You need to constantly monitor them and apply the necessary treatment to save them. It's a nice job, even if you do it as a hobby, but it's a constant one.
Have a nice evening and thanks for stopping by.
A friend of my mother's says that plants kill... Many people don't dare to have an orchard or garden because of the work involved, but I think the satisfaction is greater, it is a different lifestyle, undoubtedly more relaxed because the contact with nature fills you with energy and vitality. You are lucky to have so many fruits in your garden, although to produce 64 jars of jam you had to work a lot. But it was worth the effort. Congratulations! @erikah
Thank you! I think you need to know your limits and size the garden accordingly so the work won't be too difficult and then you'll be fine. We've reduced the size and the workload as well because we need less, but your mother is right.
That’s very true. Having a garden and growing your own food is amazing, but it comes with a lot of work and a timely work at times. When you grow a lot of fruits that ripen at the same time it can be challenging to stay on top of it. You’re clearly doing great though!
Enjoy your harvests 💙
!LUV
@erikah, @fantagira(1/4) sent you LUV. | discord | community | HiveWiki | NFT | <>< daily
! help(no space) to get help on Hive. InfoYou're right. Fruits don't care if you're busy or don't feel like harvesting. The work needs to be done in time. Thanks for the nice comment 🤗❤️
Or else birds will be happy to help harvesting 😉
No problem. I enjoy reading about other people’s gardens, especially that I didn’t plant much in mine’s this year.
I love the life cycle of your garden by using the organic waste to make compost.
Congratulations
Thank you! I love composting and trust me, benefits are many. It's a way of recycling, reusing and the plants love it.
Judging by the photo, there will probably be a grape harvest this year.
Oh wow!!
grapes are so on my hit list... i would love to grow them!!!
we had some at the last house as we had a ugly fence that was a great place. And the soil was crap... I hear grapes like rubbish soil ... lol... I'm SURE i can find soil like that in THIS garden!!! lol lol lol
thanks for sharing the techniques.
sarah
amazing, so much fruit.. would love to see a real vineyard.
Waw, it's a very lush wine, at this time I have also successfully harvested my first wine, and it was a lot of fun