2023 Gardening (outside)

[jjannie]

my pumpkin vines are starting to yellow and die back. Think upper 40s night temps are not to their liking at all. Also we've only got one pumpkin to a harvestable size. We were down on vines as well thanks to those dang magpie birds pulling out the young transplants! At least we got something. 

We haven't set any grapes on our vines this year? They've grown like crazy. Do you prune out the older vines?

All things come to an end I guess, I'm starting to see the same signs in my garden and my yellow squash and zucchini have really slowed down on their production.
No grapes again, that's really too bad, I was hoping by now they would start producing. How many years has it been since you planted them? It's a good sign they are vining out though, for a few years after planting, the starts will spend all their energy just growing vines. Hopefully by next year you will start getting grapes. When you start grape vines you should never prune them, unless they take over the area you have for them to grow. The sign for me was the grapes stating new vines of their own, when the vines get so thick they grow toward the ground and  they take root in a new location, if yours have not done that yet I would not trim them. The idea is to have the entire area so full of leaves from the vines that they start growing to the surrounding trees or other vegetation. For some reason they like it when their leaves are so thick it totally covers the grapes underneath. I think along with plenty of sun, plenty of water make all the difference. I'm cutting back now but when we were in the heat of the summer I watered twice a day for 25 minutes each time.

 maybe they are too close to those spruce trees.  think they are at least 3-4 years old, maybe a little older. I'll do my best to keep them out of pines and hope for the best. We had a few last year but just not seeing any this year.