Isleworth vineyard

This replaces 'abandoned vineyard update', as it is no longer abandoned!
After 9 months, my partner paid a visit. She rang to ask the precise location and when directed she said it looks like honeysuckle. You can take the girl out of Brum but...
She said 'there are 2 Bulgarians (her generic term for dodgy Eastern European thieving immigrants) collecting leaves.' She told them they shouldn't be there and they ignored her, but when an Englishman joined her, they left.
He said that the police had recently arrested some people in Teddington with a vanload of dead swans. Not content with social security handouts and housing, there are some who stop at nothing and don't give a damn.
On the other hand, there is a bit of a cultural gap here. Most of us town dwelling Brits regard farmers as idlers who live off EC grants to do nothing and ride around in expensive 4 wheel drive vehicles with shotguns, blocking rights of way, killing badgers and complaining all the time about the weather and the low prices the get from supermarkets.
On the other hand, many 'foreign folk' are in touch with farming and are employed by British farmers to harvest fruit because us Brits are no good at it!
A vineyard owner would start to remove leaves at this time, so why not allow people to do this for nothing, in return for the ingredients of vine leaf wine or the preparation of stuffed vine leaves? No different to harvesting elderflowers, in a way.
Meanwhile, although the parks department did resond to my appeal to continue mowing the grass and weeds, for which I am grateful, I have nonetheless invested in a petrol strimmer. It's a cheap, secondhand B&Q job which can only cope with about 30 m2 of thick grass and soft weeds before cutting out due to overheating. Mind you, after that, you really wouldn't want to continue anyway!

if they're taking leaves now, they'll probably be back, in a few months time to take the fruit as well!

If the birds don't get there first!

Sounds like the mixture could be a bit lean if it's over heating. See if there's 2 screws on the carb L&H. The L is tickover & H is high. Unscrewing should rich the mixture up a bit. How much 2 stroke oil are you adding? 50/1?

There is only a screw to adjust idling speed, a throttle stop. The fuel mix is a per instructions, 40:1. A new spark plug improved matters. I found that giving it short breaks of idling significantly extends effective run time by about 20%. I'll try super unleaded next. This model has been superceded with a slightly bigger, 26 instead of 25cc engine. Basically I'm using a light duty garden tool for agricultural work, but I once bought a 2 stroke chainsaw from Homebase which had the same shortcoming. I returned it and got another brand with a slightly bigger engine from Tesco, which worked perfectly. Size matters, it seems.

I sprayed the whole lot with systhane to arrest powdery mildew and botryris but stil have isloated 'dead arm' disease.
I am systematically removing detritus and persistent weeds and covering the growing area with weed control fabric and smothering that with shredded wood. I believe I am getting a hold on te situation

I am surprised you have botrytis problems in the open air.
I've suffered for years in the Greenhouse, but since installing fans there is no problem.

Dead arm is not botritus or even powdery mildew, although you could be forgiven for thinking that, as it has a superficial resemblance. Fortunately it only affects isolated shoots and does not seem to affect the overall health of the vine.

A sad fairy tale, it seems. It's the last vestige of an allotment site which the council were closing down, but an adjacent couple of tenants held out. The 2 plots remained but the council cut off the water supply.
The 2 plots were merged into a vineyard and the couple were celebrated in the Mail on Sunday for producing the first Isleworth wine.
But vandalism and drought led them to abandon the project, according to a local who lives across the road, who has offered me the use of his standpipe, which is very kind.
Ironically, too much rain seems to have adversely affected pollination, so I don't expect much of a crop.
Today, an arabic woman asked for a kilo of leaves so she could stuff them with rice and promised to give me some dolmades in return. I partially obliged and later tightened up the wires on the fence.
Weed control fabric does not prevent dandelions from regenerating, so I have gone for adding 'bark' chips on top. With their club card, you can get 5 x 60 litre bags from Wyvales for £16. I solved the problem of delivery by opening an unlocked gate and boldly driving the car up to the plot to drop them off. Who dares wins!

I love this thread.

I assumed the key for the padlock for the gate was a master held by park staff so they could drive in and cut the grass, but the lock has not been opened for some time. It seems they just leg over at the lowest point with a strimmer, just like I do. Why they bothered now seems a mystery. I can't imagine anyone is still paying rent. It looks simple enough to unscrew 4 screws to remove the whole bolt complete with padlock and replace it. The next job!
Officially the wettest recorded June does not bode well for the crop, as heavy rain is bad news for pollination. The tiny grapes which are in fact flowers of potential grapes, remain resolutely tiny, and many are turning brown and dropping off. Such conditions also affect next year's crop.
On the bright side, I tackled the most weed infested row to find new growth on the stump base of a 'dead' vine. This appears miraculous. Given His track record of turning water into wine, healing the sick and raising the dead, could somebody up there like me?

tonyhibbett said:

On the bright side, I tackled the most weed infested row to find new growth on the stump base of a 'dead' vine.

Click to expand...

The French call them "water sprouts".

The mildew is spreading at an alarming rate. The systhane I used is supposed to control powdery mildew but has no effect on downy mildew, so maybe it's that. My books tell me it's rare in the UK due to the climate (which of course is changing) and some vines are resistant to it. The 2 vigourous black grapevines are unaffected. I will try spraying with dithane tomorrow. It's also effective against deadarm too.

Gets more interesting. After the reference to an article in the Mail on Sunday, a search took me to the website of Hazel Murray, Sky TV weather presenter. She and someone called Dominic set up the vineyard in 1997 from 2 allotments and produced 29 bottles of Redlees Rose Razzamatazz pink sparkling wine in 1999, at a cost of £100 per bottle! She admits that the choice of varieties may have been unwise, as they ripen at different times. Riesling is not considered suitable for the UK as it requires a long growing season.
I had correctly identified one grape variety as pinot noir, but was surprised to find the whites as riesling and a second, red fleshed red as dunkelfelder, a new one to me, but hardly surprising, as it is uncommon outside of Germany, and not too many of us have experienced German red wine!
Today, I started spraying with dithane but ran out, only to find that the manufacturers, Bayer, have withdrawn the product. Fortunately Bordeaux mixture, a copper spray, is still available and does the same job. To my amazement, a young German woman came up and enquired. It turns out she has a 3 hectare vineyard back home of red grapevines!

No response from Ms Murray but hardly surprising. Her website is quite old, she may be on holiday and even if she was aware of my request for info, she might be fearful of contacting a potential stalker, considering what happened to Gill Dando.
I carry on regardless but an interesting legal question arises. If I change to gate lock and 'occupy' for a year, do I get squatter's rights? If you seize and occupy land, it becomes your own. Property is theft. Having invested time, effort and money into the project, I could have nightmares of it being bulldozed by the council one day. No reason why they would do that, though, especially if I keep my head down.
This downy mildew is nasty stuff. So nasty in fact that the dithane produced to combat it is so nasty, it had to be withdrawn. I now believe this was what destroyed 70% of the vineyard, with the help of drought and a failure to feed and properly prune.

This is brilliant, keep up the good work.
I finally got my mates pergola built this year & his vine hung from it. It looks amazing but we actually persuaded him to prune the dead wood & remove some leaves (He was adamant last year not to touch it & he only got tiny grapes) & the bunches of grapes look like they might do something this year.
I hope you get something for all your effort.

I have gained much from the venture, but as yet, no wine, but this year possibly 100 bottles, which will rise as the new vines mature.
The major problem with a pergola trained vine is birds.Netting is problematic. On the continent they simply shoot them on a large scale. I have found a product called 'Grazers', which is basically sodium chloride. You spray it on the leaves close to harvest time and birds hate it. I am trialling it this year.

Is the "Grazers" basically Brine?

It says: Contains calcium and other ingredients
Calcium chloride solution - 6% calcium oxide 4.3% w/w calcium
Application rate 30 ml in 5 litres of water

I have sprayed it on the leaves around, but not directly on some early ripening grapes on a trial basis.

Hope it works Tony!