Archive for November 2009

Those of you who were subscribed to My Grape Vine a year ago, will probably remember the article I wrote on the 30th of September 2008, about layering a grape vine – where you take a cane from an existing grape vine, to establish a new one.

This is a neat little trick you can use, if you are trying to get a new grape vine growing in an established vineyard, which by the way is not easy to do.  Why?  Remember that the older grape vines will over-shade the young vine and preventing proper sunlight to reach the vine.  The root system of an established vine, will have reached deep into the soil by now looking for food and water.  Therefore, the watering or irrigation of an established vineyard differ from that of a newly planted vineyard, so you will have to give the young vines water on it’s own – for the home grape grower, this is fine, but if you have a farm full of grapes, this is practically impossible.

For those of you who didn’t read the article back then, here is the link:  http://www.my-grape-vine.com/blog/layering-grape-vines/ (this link will open in a new window)

With this article, I want to give you an update on how that specific grape vine is doing.  Never mind the weeds, it was sprayed yesterday  LOL .

In the picture below, you can clearly see the cane coming from the established vine, going into the ground and then up again.  Notice how well the new vine developed and that I started to create the frame work already.  Yes this was done in one single year using the training methods I teach in the Complete Grape Growing System!

An added bonus is, that I will be picking a few bunches of grapes from this grape vine as well!  You can see these bunches are still small , but I promise they will be worth picking in about 2 months time.

I will keep you updated as the season progress, to see what the grape look like in the end – hold your thumbs!

Take care

Danie

www.my-grape-vine.com

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Suzana, one of the first members of My Grape Vine, send me this question a few days ago.

She wanted to know what those numbers on a fertilizer packaging means.

 

With this article, I will show exactly what they mean and how you can calculate, precisely how much of a certain fertilizer mixture you must apply, in order to get the right amount of an element in your soil.

 

 

 

The numbers on a fertilizer mix like for example a 10:10:10 fertilizer, probably the most common of all, means:

 

10 : 10: 10

N  :  P :  K

10 parts nitrogen (N), 10 parts phosphorus (P), 10 parts potassium (K)

 

But that’s not all!  On many fertilizer packages you see a 4^th number in brackets; for example

2:3:4 (27)

 

From what we have just learned, we will have

 

2 parts nitrogen (N),  3 parts phosphorus (P), 4 parts potassium (K)

 

The fourth number (27) – in brackets – is the total percentage (%) of nutrients in the mixture.  

So we have a total of 9 parts ( 2 + 3 + 4) nutrients in that mixture, that ads up to 27% of the total mixture.

 

In other words; for every 100 kg of fertiliser there will be a total 27 kg N, P, K in the mixture.

 

                                            2          27

the nitrogen (N) is                  9   x     1      =   6     kg N for every 100 kg of fertilizer mixture

 

Therefore, two ninths of 27 kg, or 6 kg, of every 100 kg of mixture will be nitrogen.

 

As for a 1:0:0(40) mixture, 40 kg Nitrogen will be added to the soil for 100kg fertilizer and no P, K

 

I hope this makes sense? :-)

 

With this formula, you can easily calculate how much of a certain fertilizer mix you must apply to add a certain amount of N:P:K to the soil.

 

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