Birdland Vineyards in August

By guest blogger John

It's hard to believe that we are more than 1/2 way through August already as we really haven't had any hot weather yet. The mornings are misty and the temperature gets to about 85F or so in the afternoon. That's lovely weather to be outside but the grapes could use a bit more heat to get them ripening.

As you can see from this photo some of the bunches are just starting to change color and every day a few more grapes show that they are starting to ripen but I think we are going to be harvesting late this year. I started irrigating the upper rows a couple of weeks ago as the vines seemed to have stopped growing and now need some water to keep them with plenty of leaves.

We did have a very unusual 'grape' on one of the vines, much bigger than normal! Hope you enjoy this photo that was not set up by us at all - pure mother nature!

What happened is that some of the tendrils on the grape vines stretched over towards the apple tree and wrapped themselves around the stalk of the apple!  The pull of the vine and tendril actually picked the apple but then held onto it too!  Now it looks like we have apples growing on our grape vines!  Makes you think that you don't want to stand still too long near the vines or they may drag you in!

New vine grafts in the vineyard

If you regularly read this blog, you may recall that we did some "bud over" in our vineyard in spring - where we grafted a white grape variety over a few of our Merlot vines.  That was at the end of the May - so I thought I'd share with you some photos of the vines now to see the progress.

There is quite a lot of variation in different vines in as much as how they have taken and grown.  You can see from this one, that maybe it  is just taking, as there is a little bit of growth on the new bud on the right:

 Next there are some with a few inches of growth from one or both of the new buds:

Then there are some vines that have grown as tall as trees!:

On these bigger ones, there are even some bunches of grapes.  This first photo shows them still as flowers - you can just see the tiny bits of flowers...and the second photo shows them as new tiny grapes:

 The majority of grafts have taken and each week we count to see how many are 4 inches or more in height.  At the moment it's 240 out of 325 - with lots more that may well be 4 inches by the time we get home.

It's been interesting to see them all start and I'd never have thought we would get so much variation.  All this growth also means we have to do lots of suckering - which is taking off any new buds and shoots that appear BELOW the graft - as they would then come up as Merlot.  So it's been quite a bit of work. 

We'll see how they fair through the fall and hopefully the numbers of grafts taken will continue to rise.

Bird's nest in the vines

We've found a couple of birds' nests in our grape vines this weekend - had never seen any before actually in the vines. Good job the birds left this first one, as it is now full of grapes! No room for birds!


The second one we found is just adorable and has a tiny little egg in it. When I first saw it, I wondered if the egg was actually a grape as it is exactly the same size as our grapes are right now - but I picked it up and it is definitely an egg - but an unhatched and unsuccessful egg.


The egg has a really delicate blue hint to it and so we tried to figure out what bird had built the nest and laid the egg.


As you can see the nest is very cup shaped so with this bit on info and knowing it was a tiny bird from the size of the egg and that one we see in and around the vineyard....we finally figured that it is an American Goldfinch nest. We often see the goldfinches in the garden and they frequently come and bathe in our fountain.


The American Goldfinches make nests that are so dense and thick that they can actually hold water - and in some places, it has been known that baby goldfinches can actually drown in their nests after heavy rainfalls, as the nest is so well made! Amazing that a tiny bird like that can create something water-tight from a few twigs. I also found out they are known as "wild canaries". Of course!


Here's a snippet of the goldfinch's song, courtesy of the US Fish and Wildlife Service.

Anyhow - it's lovely to see the eggs and nests and grapes all together.....And maybe only birds that lay eggs the size of grapes build nests in grape vines? Good camouflage....?