Vines

A couple or three weeks ago, in preparation for the barbeque, we belatedly moved the vine back around the front of the house where it used to live. It was moved around the back when we had the French Drain dug around the front of the house to keep the damp away from the foundations and as with the rest of that work, it took until this June to finally get back to normal.

I don’t know how long the vine had been out there in the first place: it looks rather ancient and wizened, but has always been healthy enough. We have even had the occasional bunch of grapes off it (though one year be were monitoring a ripening bunch and found that it had mysteriously disappeared one day while we were at work…). So, anyway. For the past couple of years it has been sitting around the back, slowly getting entangled in the buddleia and it throve there, though it didn’t produce fruit. Unfortunately, having moved it back to its “usual” place, it looks rather sad. I should point out, by the way, it is in a huge wooden pot – we haven’t been digging it up and transplanting it.

I went out last night and watered it – the soil was so dry that it was like dust. I burrowed a hole into the dirt and put the cone end of an old plastic bottle in to ensure that moisture gets down to the roots instead of just dampening the top layer and evaporating off. The pot still looked damp this morning, but the vine looks no happier. I suspect that I shall have to repeat the treatment for the rest of the week to make sure that the water gets all the way in to the pot, or we will have an ex-vine on our hands and that would be a shame.

I don’t know if Lazyweb can help? Do I have any viticulturists on what remains of my once long friends list?