The Vineyard

Down in the Hillside Garden I found two wild grape vines. Yup, right there where we had that little fire "thingy" last summer. The vines were growing like weeds because, well, they are a weed of sorts. Riverbank grapes (Vitis riparia), the most common wild grape in North America, they appear to be.


So sez I to me, "What a shame to let them go to waste." And, thus the Hillside Garden became the Hillside Garden & Vineyard.


Using some black locust snags for posts, left-over video cable for the support wire and metal rods from the dump for stakes, I've now got two trellises down among the logs from trees fell to clear the view for the house.


Now to be patient until enough woody tissue grows and I've learned to prune them properly in order to get some grapes.

The good old Vitis riparia is, of course, one of the native American rootstocks that saved the French wine industry from the Phylloxera blight in the 1800's. To this day the European vines are grafted to American vine rootstocks to avoid the blight. Yet the French, in their own way, consider this a work-around rather than a solution and have never awarded the proffered prize for finding a way to save their vineyards! Let 'em eat cake, I say.