Vines

Once upon a time, my wife and I bought a house with what a real estate agent would call a 'Mature Landscape'.  What that really means is that the yard was quite overgrown. 

One of my biggest challenges was the ivy...two or three varieties had been allowed to get out of control, and I learned that one can not maintain ivy...you are either cutting it back of getting out of it's way.  I spent many, many hours pulling up ivy. 

This was fresh on my mind this afternoon as I began tackling the grape vines growing on the fence at our new house.

 

 

They haven't been taken care of much, so I did a lot of ripping, and pulling, and cutting. 

 

 

What I really should do is install a trelis system running parrallel to the fence, to keep the weight of the vines off the fence...but I kind of need to wait and make sure these grapes are worth it.  I have ZERO idea what variety they are, and the only real info I have come from my neighor who said the grapes produced were small and kind of bitter. 

 

At some point, when there is identifiable growth, my wife or I will try to bring a clipping to the local WSU extension office, and figure out what variety we might be dealing with.