Sudden growth spurt

Our weather was warm and dry in May and early June, then shifted to wet and cool for late June, and is now wet and warm in early July. It's creating interesting growth patterns in our gardens.

Our strawberries stopped blooming and producing very early, our gooseberries were sparse and small compared with last year, the blueberries are doing much better than last year, and our fruit trees seem to be ready to produce, some for the first time. We have loads of raspberries, which we adore. Every year seems a bit different. I would hate to be a farmer in these times.

From Ireland to NJ

Here we were visiting our old stomping grounds in southern New Jersey and were most pleased to learn that scores of vineyards had popped up all over the sandy reaches of the southern shore. We were staying at the Southern Mansion and decided to visit Cape May Vineyards. A relatively recent vineyard by French standards, it's a small place, impeccably detailed for tours.

The main building where the shop and tastings are done also has local products that complement wines, like bottle stoppers, glasses, Chesapeake Bay spiced peanuts, and lots of stuff with great quotes about wine.

Wacky weather - dry and hot!

We have had the most extraordinary weather throughout the month of May and now well into June that we have ever experienced here in Ireland. The figures for Newport show a very low figure for rainfall for Newport, the closest town to our location. There were at least two weeks straight with no rainfall at all. Extraordinary. We were watering the vegetable and flower gardens but not the vineyard. Grape vines are supposed to like dry and hot.

Cool climate and clay soil = Chablis?

The truth, I have learned, is that cool/cold areas are best suited for white wine production for a variety of reasons. Whites generally ripen earlier, and they are more forgiving, flexible and adaptable. It is easier to make a good wine from a wider range of maturity than reds. So cool regions that have shorter seasons may still produce acceptable and even excellent white wines. That is not so true of red wines.  Red grapes need a long season of hot weather to mature to just the right sweetness.

Leaves unfurled

Now we know. Our new grape vines survived the winter.

We've had the most unusual weather. More than a week of warm sunshine and absolutely no rain. We have not watered in the vineyard or orchard, only the vegetables, flower garden, and greenhouse.

We launched our boat on the high spring tide in Killybegs on Saturday the 7th of May and delivered her from Donegal to Mayo arriving home Tuesday the 10th. We had no rain and little wind en route and it has not rained since. That's a long time without rain and wind in Ireland. How will the vines react to dry stress?  How will they react to a mild winter and frost only for a few weeks in April. Whatever wind we've had has been easterly and northerly again this whole week.

Where have the bees gone?

It appears that our bees have died. There is collapse of hives being reported all over Ireland this winter. The beekeepers remove the box and find dead bees clustered and the honey untouched. They are thinking that it was the wet summer and cool wet winter that caused disease to kill them off. Up to 50% loss and more being reported. Tragic!

But that spells disaster for our orchard and vineyard.  There are plenty of bumblebees. I saw one wasp and quite a few flies, but the fruit trees are laden with flowers that, for the first time since planting, have not been blown off by hurricane force winds. So I went out with an artist's brush this afternoon and pretended to be a bee.

I had seen an article about the Chinese pollinating their crops by hand because of the collapse of their bees and other insects. So I decided to try the same. I don't know if what I am doing will have any effect but I have to try.

 Meanwhile the grapes have not yet unfurled their leaves as it has been cold. But signs of life continue and hope remains eternal. We'll see what this foray into food production will yield this year.

We had one good year with a bumper crop of apples (2014). One bad year with nothing of note, no apples, one mini-pear, and a few cherries eaten by the birds just as they ripened. Growing food is not easy. I wouldn't want to have to depend on it.

Signs of life

In my last post, I said winter was over. But it had only just begun. Now in April, we've had brilliant sunshine but frost almost daily. 

Our experimental grape vines seem to have survived the winter.  They have not leafed but are budding strongly.  Hope!

The weather has been very strange. The winter was mild but very wet and stormy. Then the cold snap came just before most things started budding.  A few garden plants didn't survive but I am hopeful that the cold was enough to harden the grape vines. They need a bit of cold weather to shock them into action.The last week has been blissfully sunny with no rain at all. How very strange. We went from 3 degrees C to 18.5 degrees centigrade overnight. Now it's back down to 3 degrees again as we cycle within a huge anticyclone and the winds clock between northerly and southerly.

The fruit trees are laden with flower buds ready to burst open, but there is no sign of the honey bees. The hive appears to be dead. How sad, how very very sad. Especially after reading the astonishing novel called The Bees. I couldn't wait to watch them this year having studied their behaviour and read this profoundly influential story. But only bumble bees have appeared in our garden. What will we do?  There is word of hives having collapsed all over the country, thought to be the aftermath of an extraordinarily wet and cool summer that never came last year.

Meanwhile the climate change reports indicate that globally March was once again the hottest month on record (not here!) and the 11th consecutive month of increasing temperatures. According to data from the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA), the average global temperatures were 1.07 °C (1.9°F) above the average in March since records began in 1891. Data released by NASA shows that March was 1.65°C (3.0°F) warmer than the averages between 1951 and 1980.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the primary keeper of such data in the U.S., reported even more dire news. "The average global temperature across land surfaces was 2.33°C (4.19°F) above the 20^th century average of 3.2°C (37.8°F), the highest March temperature on record, surpassing the previous March record set in 2008 by 0.43°C (0.77°F) and surpassing the all-time single-month record set last month by 0.02°C (0.04°F). The combined average temperature over global land and ocean surfaces for March 2016 was the highest for this month in the 1880–2016 record, at 1.22°C (2.20°F) above the 20^th century average of 12.7°C (54.9°F)."

So according to NOAA's figures, we've already surpassed the 2 degree mark. Anomalies are occurring all over the world.

Meanwhile, last month we visited the Chiltern Valley Winery & Brewery near Henley in England and learned all about small winery viticulture in the UK. They had just pulled up all their grapes and replanted with new varieties. Their wines are quite interesting but they produce mainly with other growers' fruit. We learned principally that it takes a fair bit of investment to get a little operation going and so it's best to produce small quantities of liqueurs. We also learned that we planted the vines in the wrong orientation (up and down the hill instead of across the hill facing the sun).  It was great fun, the guide was very knowledgeable and entertaining, and fun was had by all.

Now let's get back to growing grapes.