This was not a comfortable week to be working on the farm. Temperatures plunged to as low as -15 deg. C. However, since we had just finished a row of Kiwi trellises, this did not deter us from work.
Our objective this week was to prune our Arctic Kiwis ...in Arctic conditions no less :)
With our first row of Kiwis, we were very aggressive and trimmed the bushes back to a single vine (which we could train to climb on the new structures). For this second row, we decided to be a little gentler. Since some of these bushes fruited in the fall, we wanted to see what would happen if we kept 2-3 vines with at least 2-3 years of growth.
There is very little information available on pruning these types of Kiwis, even less on pruning and training Kiwis which have been neglected for many years.
In the end we started with bushes that looked like the following....
And ended up with this.....
Most of these vines took from 2 hours to half a day each of pruning. The most difficult were those that had "fallen" on themselves. The easiest were those that had manage to climb some tree (those were also the ones that had the most fruits).
The difficulty is in the rather aggressive growing behaviour of the vines. They form "pigtails" and will tend to wrap themselves around each other. The following picture provides an idea of what we had to decipher.
I have often compared these to messed up balls of twine. In hindsight, that's probably over simplifying the situation. At least twine has a beginning and an end. This was more like separating a bowl of spaghetti, if you can image spaghetti strands that can tightly bind to each other.
As we got closer to the root stock, things did not even look any better.
In any case, we managed to finish our Kiwi pruning for the year. We still have some 11 rows of Kiwis to weed, trellis and prune, but we want to see how our first two rows will come along before we do any further damage. Spring will tell!
I did mention that it was a very cold week to be pruning. It was the kind of weather where your mustache will grow icicles.
Luckily we still had quite a bit of farm waste to burn, so we were able to warm up regularly.
Having finished the Kiwis earlier than anticipated, we have now directed our attention to the grapes we discovered last fall. If you remember, Tristan and I had discovered some great tasting "wild" grapes. It turns out that these were growing up some trees but were rooted in a row of trellises we were only able to find after weeding the far side of one of our Kiwi plots.
The vines are very old and are producing what I believe are Concord table grapes but again, they have been badly neglected. So our current project is to bring this row of grapes to the light and attempt to prune them.
This row of grapes is completely obstructed with very large trees, some sumac and thorn bushes, as well as a few fallen trees. These trees were completely taken down by the Kiwi vines. This is what we are starting from, a view between our row of grapes and our last row of Kiwis.
The first step this week was to take down some major trees, as well as some Sumac which were completely "pulled" by the Kiwis and ended up growing at a sharp angle.
We moved to the country and settled on a farm with the hope of leading a more sustainable lifestyle. Part of this effort will be growing our own food (or a large part of it).
It was an amazing pleasure this week to start to shop the seed catalogs for the vegetables we would plant this Spring. I never thought it would be so much fun to consider the many varieties of vegetables we could grow. We're in fact already dreaming of the bounty we will harvest next fall!
So we've now ordered our seeds. Our key source of supply is an Ontario-based dealer in heirloom, rare, organic and sustainability grown seeds: The Cottage Gardener. Of course, we've decided for the most part to try some rather odd plants...being "foodies" we do want to try different culinary experiences.
Given the selection at hand and the amount we plan to grow (and as novices, we are perhaps being a little too keen), I've decided to have a family competition. We will each take responsibility for at least 6-10 plants and we will see who can produce the most food at year end.
I have discovered this video which is a real inspiration 6,000 lbs on 1/10th acre. If a family can do it on a small city plot in Los Angeles....surely we should be able to do as well (I hope!).
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