Sunday 29 September 2013

Beta Grapes, by Kira

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
The Beta grape is a cross between the Concord and Wild Riverbank.
The skin is sweet, the flesh is tart and they have an intense grape flavour.
 
This past summer one of our two vines was blown over when a bad windstorm came through.
Andrew and I took the opportunity to espalier the grape vines properly.
We used steel t-posts in between and on either end of the vines and then ran steel wires to run the vines on.
I lost a lot of young grapes while pruning, untangling and hanging the vine that had blown down.
The other vine was loaded with grapes and still standing so I decided to wait on pruning it until after harvest.
A couple days ago the kids and I harvested the grapes and off the one vine and we got nearly a bushel of grapes!
We will be busy in the kitchen this week making fruit leather and grape jelly.
 
 
 
 

1 comment:

  1. Those grapes look beautiful - I love the first photo with the sun shining on them, lovely colours.

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