Grapes!

I grew grapes.  :o)  I've been trying for probably three or four years now, and finally, I have grapes! 

The first year, the deer ate my grapevines to the ground during the winter.  The second year, the vines grew (a little), but the deer ate them again.  The third year the vines grew (more) and I mulched them heavily with some  musty hay that wasn't good for feeding to the horses.

When I say heavily mulched, I perhaps should clarify:  I tried to bury the grape vines so deep in hay that the deer would never find them.  Something like knee deep.

It seems to have done the trick!  The deer did not even get one nibble of my grape vines last winter.  This spring, the vines started off strong and healthy, and they actually had blossoms on them!  What joy it was to see 'grape flowers'.  I showed them off to my husband.  I showed them off to my kids.

Then, we got busy with plowing and planting and weeding and watering the garden.  And, along about the time DS2 headed for college in mid-August, the weeding fell by the wayside.  So, currently my garden looks rather like an overgrown weedy meadow with a patch of field corn sticking up above the ragweed and quack grass.  Definitely not a picture I want to post here.

Last night, however, I remembered that I had grape flowers at the beginning of the summer.  I wondered if those grape flowers ever turned into grape clusters.  So, I bravely waded into the sea of weeds (bravely because I swear the weeds are as tall as I am, and who knows what critters are lurking in the cover the weeds provide).  I aimed for the approximate last known location of my grape vines.  Had DH and I actually trellised those vines like we said we would this spring before life got crazy with graduation and DS2's open house among other things, I would have known exactly where to find my grape vines.

As it was, I had to knock weeds out of the way, and bend down to search close to the ground for grape leaves.  Finding some, I followed them back toward the stakes I could now sort of see.  And this is what I found:

Concord grapes!  Lovely fat round dark purple grapes.  With big seeds, I remembered as I bit into one.  But delicious, oh so delicious!

I searched through the weeds some more, finding my other Concord vine, and picking all the grapes I could see.  Which didn't amount to enough to make into jelly or anything, but still, it was a harvest I felt some small measure of pride in.

Scratch one more thing off the "I Want To Grow It Organically Myself" list.  Now, next year, the trellis will definitely be built so the vines can be kept off the ground and hopefully be even more fruitful. 

Homegrown/homemade grape jelly in 2012?  It's a goal!