Sharing the harvest.

[Nature's Babe]

One old vine and the grape harvest has been phenominal, one leader fed into the greenhouse gave us a bountiful early crop, the rest of the grapevine outside continued with a later harvest, we enjoyed them week after week, i bartered some, gifted some, finally after preserving some I ran out of ideas and now the leaves have dropped the birds are partying round at least a dozen bunches of grapes still hanging on the vine, glad to share with the birds as I do with the cane fruit, there has been plenty for us all, it's one way to say thank you for the beautiful birdsong all year.
Thoughtfully they left the small kiwi Jenny crop alone, a small crop of those but as the vines mature I am hoping for enough to share next year, small fruits but deliciously sweet.

[Primrose]

Yes, I left a few bunches of grapes for the birds too on our Reisling grape vine. The weather has just suddenly turned very cold and the blackbirds have just discovered them. The pyracantha berries are also disappearing at a rate of knots too.

[glallotments]

We took the net off the redcurrants when we had harvested enough to let in the blackbirds. Whilst the currants were covered they were trying everything to get to then and also chuntered at us when we were under the nets picking. They helped themselves after we removed the nets but I noticed last week after the leaves had dropped that there were still lots of shrivelled currants left so the birds must have gor bored after a while - a bit like us!!

[Nature's Babe]

The birds and bees like variety too, as we do. Its lovely having warm enough summers to grow grapes, apparently now our wines are outperforming the French, its getting hotter there, my brother lives in France and sometimes they just close the shutters and stay indoors it gets so hot!

[glallotments]

Warm summers? Not where we are! The last couple of years have been miserable. Warm springs maybe!

I think a lot of the reason we can grow more fruit now is more to do with plants being bred to grow is cooler climates.

[Nature's Babe]

Hi Gallotments, yes plant breeding has helped. I'm on the south east coast which is tending to be warmer and drier, than the west and further north we had a very hot early summer and drought, it was so hot the loganberries cooked on the vine, our late summer was wetter though still warm, I was pleased the local farmer just managed to get his wheat harvest in the day before the rains started, hopefully he got a good price for it because harvests elsewhere were not so good. Its certainly wet here now, but we still haven't had a really hard frost yet, just one light one.