A modest beginning

This is a bunch of grapes, not very big, kinda mildewy, and picked too late. The important thing is that it is the very first bunch of grapes from 4 Pinot Noir grape plants that I planted late last spring.

In just a couple more years we can expect to get enough grapes from these 4 vines to make a reasonable amount of wine. Maybe a dozen or two dozen bottles. Which will be more then enough to supply the happy hour on Wednesday afternoon with wine made right here at Rose Villa.

The grape vines I inherited down in the gardens produced 3 or 4 boxes of concord grapes, a couple boxes of purple seedless table grapes and 3 boxes of wine grapes. The wine grapes were taken into the Health Center and were cleaned up, their stems taken off and are now sitting in several 5 gallon containers to ferment.

It's hard to see in this photo, but the wine grape vine is in the middle. There are 6 grape vines in the space where no more then 4 should be planted. The middle vines tend to get covered and smothered by their neighbors. I will be taking at least 2 of the vines out next year, now that I know which is which I'm thinking it will be one of the Concorde grape vines and the vine next to what we think is the "Merlot" wine grape. Not the best solution but one that should give the "Merlot" vine more room to produce good grapes.

The rest of the garden is just about all done for the season, just some secondary broccoli and some kale left.

I will be leaving the broccoli, kale and Swiss chard in for the winter just to see if they can make it through to spring. The beans I planted amongst the kale is not doing well at all, too cold and not enough light I think, I will take it out this week.

Other wise the next big news is the greenhouse in the patio of the health center. It is finally finished and the growing benches installed ready to go to work. It's just too bad it's mid November, there is not a lot of planting and growing to be done now, but I will try to get something going.

To the right of the greenhouse you can just see the snow peas planted in the red pot, there is some arugula in another pot that is also still doing well. There is not much activity in the patio area this time of year, but maybe If I get some flowers going in the greenhouse I can "invite" the people to come out.