How to make trellising more interesting!
A commonly asked question out on the vineyard is ‘why do your grapes grow so low?’. The type of vine training and the positioning of your grapes on the trellis depends on your location.
Have I mentioned Nova Scotia is cool? Cool climate, yes. This means that we grow the grapes on the lowest trellising, close to the ground, like stockings hung on a low mantlepiece. It’s warmer down there at night, encouraging the grapes to ripen even when the sun goes down. This also allows a large feathery canopy of leaves for photosynthesis, like a great ostrich bottom turned up to the sun with its cracked, spindly trunk-like neck stuck into the ground.
We grow the grapes close to the ground, keeping a grand feathery leaf canopy…
…looking much like an ostrich.
So for the fingerpicking grape pickers it means you pluck upon your knees. Or, as some of the whistling old boys do…
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