Grape harvest day in our backyard
Just like last September Apple Picking Day with Kiel, today is grape harvest day – in our backyard! We ask our daughter-in-law Kasandra if she likes grapes and she says yes as she plans to make grape jam for the family. I have never taste a homemade grape jam so I am excited to harvest as much as possible to see how much we can produce.
Our grape vines grow like crazy!
There is a saying about growing grapes:
First year sleepers, second year creepers, third year leapers.
From a plant nursery about growing grapes
Sleepers means all the growth is happening under ground. Creepers means it is just starting to build above ground while third year leapers means having an explosive growth. Shane planted two grape vines on the pergola and the leaves filled up pretty good at the top by year three. We harvested at least 3 big buckets of grapes that year. This is the fourth year and we wonder how many buckets we can harvest. I have fertilized the grape vines since May and it is exciting to see our grape vines grow like crazy! The grape fragrance is sweet so Shane has been tasting the grapes to give the go ahead for harvest.
Kiel’s first grape harvest!
We have two big aluminum bowls and ladder ready for harvest. Kasandra comes with a straw basket and two year old Kiel is excited. He has been picking grapes all through summer and playing with them. This is Kiel’s first grape harvest and my camera is ready. Shane shows Kiel where to pick the grapes on the lower vines. He follows grandpa’s instruction until he gets bored, which is within 5 minutes! LOL Throwing the grape one by one into the fire pit is a lot more fun. Banging the aluminum bowls and make loud noise is the best!
Grapes everywhere
Our grape harvest day turns out to be a very tiring activity because we have no idea the lush leaves are hiding more grapes. There are grapes everywhere on the vines and I have to bring out more plastic buckets and containers. Shane even have to empty out a big recycle container for the grapes. We decided to stop work after everything we have are filled up. There are still so many grapes on the vines and we will leave them for the birds.
Our plans for the grapes
Well…Kasandra takes home the big storage bucket filled with grapes and we have the rest. Our plans for the grapes are to make jam and juice to drink every morning. We are going to share some with our neighbors.
Edited a week later: Kasandra didn’t make the grape jellies. It was too much to do while watching a boisterous boy. She juices some. We did the same until day four and grew so sick of it. Unfortunately, our neighbors didn’t want grapes with seeds. I juice all the grapes and freeze them.
Plans for next year
Grape harvest day has been fun for our grandson because he gets to play with the grapes and in the garden. We have the photos and great memory despite how tired we are afterwards. Our plans for next year is to prune the grape vines and make sure they don’t grow all over the fence. We might even offer to sell the grapes for wine if next year’s harvest is as bountiful as this year.
For our readers interested in growing grapes, you can visit this site. Learn from our mistake and only buy seedless grape vine. The grapes we have are extremely sweet but we can’t use an automatic juicer because it blends the seeds and make the juice bitter. We use an old fashion hand held juicer from Shane’s mom and it takes a long time to juice every grapes.
Check out our Lifestyle Fun with Grandkids section for more stories of our family activities.