Winter work

Over the past winter I worked on removing four rows of grapes.  I quit consuming ETOH a couple years back and grapes kept dying back hard with harsh winters.  It was  quite an endeavor removing the wires, posts, and vines.  The land was plowed over, disked, then tilled as best as possible.  My wife spent days removing old irrigation tubing long since buried. 

The area is now planted with two year old seedling trees.  Most of the seedlings were from a large weedy IBC tote that I gave up on potting.  Trying to be fiscally responsible they were put to work.  Today was a nice milestone for this new planting as each tree now has a T post and a cage around each tree.  The cages were made with field fence, held on the T post up off the ground to allow some hand weeding.  The last planting like this I placed a square of landscape cloth on the ground before mulching but over time some of this cloth is getting chewed up in the lawn mower, I am giving up on that.

Also picture are some failed grafts, not sure of the cause.  I am new to grafting with some success with apples and Texas inlay on pecans.  The scion wood came from Gloria Grande, was done on 4/2, had broken bud but not leafed out this am.  Before buying more scions I wanted to check on my own success.  Bummer to see both a four flap and tool made graft fail.  But this was my first batch, the wood was looser, and I hope I got better.  Will keep track of methods, timing, variety, scion source as the season progresses.