Cold Hardy Grapes and Vines: Summer Field Notes

grape seedlings, from valiant, a small blue grape hardy in zone 3

It's almost as cold hardy and vigorous as wild grape. so the seedlings would work for any context like...

goji berries have these attractive purple flowers all summer, they have this unusual perpetual growth through the whole

season into late fall where the vines have all stages of fruit - the flowers, green fruit and red ripe fruit. today I collected some cuttings a bit late in the season (july 8), usually june is better but now there are...

wild grapes, cold stratified from nov through march so about five months in the fridge in some damp vermiculite, planted

in april. they're a good size to transplant now, I usually put 2-3 to a cell in our plug trays but singles are also ok. funny story I divided up any earlier batch in june and we actually got frost mid june here in...

valiant grapes from hardwood collect in early spring, these were on bottom heat for a month in the root cellar,

then moved onto the mist bench to start hardening off. now at about six weeks they have enough roots to pot up. about half are going to stay in bins to root in bulk and I'll sort out the largest as bare root plants at...

what a month in southern Manitoba, rain every day and here we got a light frost two nights this week - this thermometer

is up high near the house, for sure in low areas it approached freezing. some small grapes and walnuts looked frost damaged, I just figured it was all the rain. in the city you would have been fine. Probably the rain...

valiant grapes

planted some grapes along this east wall, stucco with morning sun, heaped up with black soil and old wood chip

then topped with straw. the eaves through will get directed into the bed, and the thick stucco should radiate some heat to help. hopefully a good spot for grapes...

grapes in a forest context

tried for years without the cage, and the vines would always get trimmed back by wildlife. finally put up some stucco wire cages...

amur grape germinating after five months of stratification

One way to know your seed is ready is when any of them start to sprout in the bag, easier to plant at this stage. These went into...

trying grape cuttings like this, in our root cellar where it's a bit cool and quite damp

dipped into some iba talc, a bit of cambium exposed, 2-3 node cuttings. last year through sheer neglect we had bundles of cuttings root in these conditions, but I wonder if I should move them outside and just keep in the...

valiant grapes coming along, I finally caged them

I think rabbits have been trimming them, so just a simple roll of stucco wire gives the small...

some potted grapes, minnesota 78 very similar to valiant

tasty, large seeds. I imagine they’re larger on an established vine, these are going...

hops flowering

I started these bines from fuggle seeds years ago, creates a wall...

hops are fun, I setup poles and they find them

if I run strings between them they’ll span...

virginia creeper seeds are ripe when the little grape-like fruits turn blue

This patch of vines where I like to collect are old and overtaking a stand of...

trying to identify grapes on the left, center is Beta from a young vine, right is riparia or wild grapes, and left

is from a large vine planted in 2010. valiant? all are ripe here today and cold hardy...

hops monster

there’s just a single 1” bamboo pole in there...

netted these small grapes to keep

riverbank grape vitis riparia, super cold hardy, survives above the snow in -40

video is softwood cuttings rooted in two weeks under mist. #grapes...

vitus riparia, or riverbank grape germinating after a long six months in cold stratification, in a bag with damp paper

towel and in a fridge crisper...

hops are over head height now four weeks from when they started growing

our bines are five years old and started from seed, here I give them simple poles to climb then they’ll span between the poles and male a wall of hops by the end of...

the U of Sask campus in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan has some super nice landscaping, here’s an arbor with some impressive

these cascade hops are the first to show some roots in our mist setup after two weeks

Usually after there’s an inch or more if roots it’s time to pot them up and start to harden them off. I’ll wait for a few dozen to be ready before moving them, otherwise if starts to turn into too many small batches...

Yellow #honeysuckle, Lonicera dioica a flowering vining honeysuckle native to Canada I haven’t noticed before growing up

the prunus virginiana. Maybe should propagate it. Anyone know what it is? Cold hardy to...