Pruning Grape vines

Pruning Grape vines

Sorry , this blog is long overdue.As I have said before Grape planters in the Philippines can make Three to Four harvest in a year , unlike once a year harvest in cold countries.

After harvest , vines will shed their leaves during rest period (Fruiting Interval) this is usually for 15 to 30 days. After a month, we can start pruning the vines to prpepare them for the next flowering stage.

Pruning is an art of its own, I usually prune grapes on the first year by cutting spurs closer to the trunk for Red Cardinals since this variety of grapes are high fertility cultivars (high yielding) this called spur pruning

 And cane pruning for the Greeen Grapes , since they do not cluster as thick as Cardinals

After pruning , application of organic fertilizer is necessary to promote new shoots and leaves production. It is also advisable to always keep the soil around the trunk wet , specially during dry season.

Two weeks after pruning , new shoots will emerge ,  with new flower clusters. The cycles will re-start again. Since we harvested our fruits last Februaray. We pruned our grapes late March.

Today is April 14 , 2015 and this is our new Grape Clusters

So counting 90 Days  . I am expecting a late July Harvest.

Building Up The The Palawan Vineyard Resort

It is now late February 2015, and we have completed our materials and we are now ready to initially construct the   three bedroom rest house , this will be our main dwelling place. Another 2 Long houses with 10 door  guest, house will be constructed after the completion of the main rest house

Come 1st week March we will start to prepare the area where our initial grapes vines (50 Pcs) will be planted. ,if all schedules pushes through  the area will be ready to cater to guest next summer (2016)

It will house a 100 Pcs grape vines ,   2 20 Guest capacity long houses , the guest house design will be similar to Mulu long houses of Borneo to accent the beauty of the area.

Starting this week we will feature a weekly , blog on construction and development up until the area is ready for your vists

A surprise visitor arrive in our area 

This is a local skunk , it emits a very foul odor when attack , but a very gentle creature when left undisturb. It is a nocturnal animal that trives in the area local calls it Panto Pantot because of the smell that it emit when scared 

Harvesting The Last Batch

Just harvested the last batch of grapes yesterday on our TARLAC GRAPES some friends were lucky to have tasted them kahit konti lang , to those unlucky one's like  me wag na po kayo magtampo next time na lang po tayo , Im sure medyo madami dami na yung next fruit. Grapes in the Philippines bear fruits three times in a year. unlike in the cold countries where they only bear fruit once a year. Our fruited vines will now rest for a while to recover. Come late March we will be pruning them (6 Vines) to induced them to bear more fruits for the next season. (Aug-Sept)

The newly planted young vines so far are doing good on their near 4th month , so by June or july we are expecting to prune this new batches for December harvest. Just bear with us since we are also on experimenting stage.

We will try to plant an addional 50 Vines coming March-April  to complete the 100 vines targeted for Tarlac experimental Vinyard this year. (if the schedule is correct thi vine will fruit by nove or dec , in concert with the first fruited six vines so next year we will have more harvest.

I will be targeting a 500 Vine vineyard for our TTARLAC FARM , so please continue following our blog if you wish to learn how to plant grapes or just enjoying seeing a vineyard grow and bear fruit

Gape Training

The Newly planted (3 Mos) old grapes cutting are now released from their growth screen and ready to be wire trained. 

Wire training is the process on how you want your grapes to grow. You can train your grapes using wire to follow a certain pattern , so that pruning is easy , fruits are easily accessible and the leavs canopies will not cover the blooms.

This are additional 20 Vines , we will try to plant another 30 Vines this March. As we go we will try to have at least 100 vines for this farm ib Tarlac City

We will try to eventually achieve this vineyard look copied from a Napa Valley Farm in California

Qualities Of Grapes Produce in our Experimental farm in Tarlac

After 10 months of waiting we have seen  the fruits of our labor, all in all we can say the 10 month experiment was worth the wait and it is a success. We have   successfully grown an initial batch.of fruitful vines.  Although we have a very high mortality due to our lack of knowledge it was worth it

The quality of the table grapes we have produced when they reach full maturity are comparative in qi\uality and sweetness of imported grapes. In due time I hope we can achieve commercial production both in Tarlac and here in Palawan

We did not use any pesticides or commercial fertilizers with these grapes. No preservatives is use during harvest. The plants are healthy and the fruits are juicy and sweet.

Securing Young Grapes Cuttings (Tarlac Mini Farm)

Securing the new Red Cardinal Grapes. People where asking why do I need to cover our grapes with screens. There are bugs that loves to eat our baby grape leaves also caterpilars eat them like crazy . I do not want to use bug spray or any pestisides .

My solution is to cover them with screen. The Screen prevents the bugs from eating the leaves and the birds/bats from eating the fruits. It also works as a wind and rain barrier. With the cost of pestiscides today and their destructive side effects this screen is a cheap and wise solution.

If you look closer on the picture you can see our growing red cardinals 3 months old.Once they get out of the restrictive growth screen , we expect them to start to go on full bloom

February 11, 2015 exactly  , 10 months after we planted our first grapes cuttings last  May 2014 , we will have our first harvest !!!., the fruits are sweet and can be compared to imported grapes, although not yet in commercial quantity we have proven that grapes can be planted and grown in Tarlac !!!

Now that we have learned how to deal with the bugs that ate most of our first batch The newly planted vines (Planted in early December) are also doing good with zero mortality(Good News) 

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Having this success, coming March we will be pruning the fruited vines and we will try t to plant at least 120 cuttings  (We now have 30 Vines). My main target is to plant 1000 vines by year 2016.