Vineyard Part Two...

Once the ground had been cleaned and contoured, my grandfather and I laid out the posts and pegged out the rows:

We then dug 3 feet down and sunk each post in, lined them up vertically with a spirit level and packed the soil around them to hold them tight:

Before the posts could be strung with the wires they had to be stayed so that they wouldn't collapse inwards with the strain or lift out of the ground. There are 2 main post staying techniques, staying them from the inside:

or tying them back and guying each post to a smaller, deeper sunken post: 

Tying them back is the more secure method, as if you stay them on the inside, the stays can act as a fulcrum if there is enough strain, and the posts can still lift out of the ground. Not wanting the visual clutter of seeing the stay poking out of the ground, we buried our stays and laid them horizontally tying the wires around their girths...

This has the added advantage that the stay is much more secure as there is a larger surface of soil holding the posts back.

Above: All the posts stayed.

Then it was time to string the wires up. We chose 3 wires, allowing us to have 3 cordons, at 1', 2' and 3' respectively. Simple stapling of the wires usually suffices. We used wind-up wire tensioners in the middle of our wires to get them nice and taut, and added a middle pole halfway along the wire to prevent sagging.

Planting and training the vines...

Above and below: The final product, 8 rows of grapes planted, mulched and tied to the wires

When planting a vine an espalier type technique is usually used to get maximum support for each vine as well as good airflow around the grapes and maximal sun exposure...

Proper training of grapevines is essential to maintain plant size, shape, and productivity. If left unattended, grapevines can become unruly, and fruiting will be poor due to overproduction of vegetation.

To start training your vine, plant it and let it grow almost unfettered in the first year. Then in its first autumn select the 6 best canes (a summer shoot that has matured and hardened off into a woody, brown cane) to train along the wires to become your cordons (a permanent extension of the trunk that is horizontally positioned along the trellis wire. Train one cane along each wire, growing away from the main trunk.

In the second autumn you count the buds on each of the spurs (the fresh canes coming off your cordon) and prune the spur back to about 3-5 fruiting nodes. These nodes will each produce one cluster of fruit. How many buds you choose depends on desired fruit load and space.

You may use different approaches for determining the number of fruiting buds. With any pruning system, at least 85 to 90 percent of the one-year-old wood will be removed during pruning. This will allow the grapevines to maintain their structure (shape), distribute the fruit load along the cordons, and enhance fruit quality. On three-year-old (or older) vines, approximately 40 to 50 buds will be kept.

Grapevines are best pruned in the middle of winter, when sap levels are at their lowest and the wood is fully hardened. During the spring remember to regularly mulch to retain moisture and decrease weed growth; and to fertilize with an all-round nitrogen based fertiliser.

Anglesea Abbey and Espalier...

Peter is back in the UK again for 3 weeks, and has been emailing back plenty of lovely photographs as he gallivants about the countryside. Yesterday he went to visit an old haunt, Anglesea Abbey, where he used to spend time studying in the gardens when he was at Cambridge University. He is enjoying lovely weather, as you can see...

Anglesea Abbey (above) is a former priory in the village of Lode, 5 ½ miles northeast of Cambridge. A community of Augustinian Canons during the reign of Henry I (1100 and 1135), built their priory there, and later acquired extra land from the nearby village of Bottisham to create their gardens. The canons were expelled in 1535 during the Dissolution of the Monasteries.

The former priory was acquired around 1600 by Thomas Hobson, who converted it to a country house for his son-in-law, Thomas Parker, retaining a few arches from the original priory. At that time the building's name was changed to "Anglesey Abbey", which sounded grander than the original "Anglesey Priory".

In the late 18th century, the house was owned by Sir George Downing, the founder of Downing College, Cambridge.

Huttleston (1896–1966) and Henry (1900–1973) Broughton bought the site in 1926 and made improvements to the house. They were the sons of Urban Broughton (1857–1929), who had made a fortune in the mining and railway industries in America. Henry married, leaving the abbey to his brother, then 1st Lord Fairhaven, in 1930.

Henry became the 2nd Lord Fairhaven. Huttleston used his wealth to indulge his interests in history, art, and garden design, and to lead an eighteenth-century lifestyle at the house. On his death, Huttleston left the abbey to the National Trust so that the house and gardens could "represent an age and way of life that was quickly passing"

The house and grounds are open to the public (although some parts remain the private home of the Fairhaven family). The 98 acres (400,000 m²) of landscaped grounds are divided into a number of walks and gardens, with classical statuary, topiary and flowerbeds.

The grounds were laid out in an 18th-century style by the estate's last private owner, the first Baron Fairhaven, in the 1930s. A large pool, the Quarry Pool, is believed to be the site of a prehistoric coprolite mine. Lode Water Mill, dating from the 18th century was restored to working condition in 1982 and now sells flour to visitors.

Below: The bench where Peter used to study

Below: A large espaliered tree at the abbey...

The French word espalier (from the Italian spalliera, meaning “something to rest the shoulder (spalla) against”), describes the art of training trees to grow in a flat plane according to a variety of different patterns achieved by training whips, or grafting branches along wires or against walls.



During the 17th Century, the word initially referred only to the actual trellis or frame on which such a plant was trained to grow, but over time it has come to be used to describe both the practice and the plants themselves. The practice was popularly used in the Middle Ages Europe to produce fruit inside the walls of a typical castle courtyard without interfering with the open space and to decorate solid walls by planting flattened trees near them., however evidence suggests that the technique dates back possibly to ancient Egypt.

How to grow and espaliered tree...

Other beautiful examples...