The coming Grapocalypse
We're well over 100 now, and so far, the roses we planted this year are doing all right. I'm watching them like a hawk and watering the hell out of them.
The grapes are not ripe yet, but they're just at that point where they're starting to go from sour to kinda bland tasting, and that's the point at which the birds descended upon them last year. Last year was the first year we got a halfway decent crop of them, and this year (thanks to Peasant's advice about powdery mildew) we have a much better crop. So I decided to see if I could keep the birds off. When I was a kid, we used to put nylon mesh bags over them, but they never worked very well, as a determined bird can peck right through the bag. Upon googling I found one site which suggested using brown paper lunch bags, so I've decided to give that a try. They're certainly much less scratchy and annoying than nylon mesh.
Before and after:
I left some of the smaller bunches exposed, in the hopes that if the birds have something easily accessible, they won't go after the bagged ones as much. And so I can check for ripeness without taking the bags off. We have three grapevines there -- two green seedless, which I have come to think of as The Good One and The Slacker, and one red seedless, which is a couple of years younger. The Good One and the red seedless have about two dozen bunches of grapes a piece, while The Slacker has maybe half that, and they're smaller and sparser. I was thinking seriously about just digging The Slacker up to give The Good One more space, but maybe I'll leave it as the annual Bird Sacrifice.
Have some bonus pomegranates:
Rants Talk to me
The grapes are not ripe yet, but they're just at that point where they're starting to go from sour to kinda bland tasting, and that's the point at which the birds descended upon them last year. Last year was the first year we got a halfway decent crop of them, and this year (thanks to Peasant's advice about powdery mildew) we have a much better crop. So I decided to see if I could keep the birds off. When I was a kid, we used to put nylon mesh bags over them, but they never worked very well, as a determined bird can peck right through the bag. Upon googling I found one site which suggested using brown paper lunch bags, so I've decided to give that a try. They're certainly much less scratchy and annoying than nylon mesh.
Before and after:
I left some of the smaller bunches exposed, in the hopes that if the birds have something easily accessible, they won't go after the bagged ones as much. And so I can check for ripeness without taking the bags off. We have three grapevines there -- two green seedless, which I have come to think of as The Good One and The Slacker, and one red seedless, which is a couple of years younger. The Good One and the red seedless have about two dozen bunches of grapes a piece, while The Slacker has maybe half that, and they're smaller and sparser. I was thinking seriously about just digging The Slacker up to give The Good One more space, but maybe I'll leave it as the annual Bird Sacrifice.
Have some bonus pomegranates:
Rants Talk to me