Finishing the harvested grapevines

After another hour's work, I now have eight finished hoops of grapevine ready to use as frames for rib baskets. The vines needed to have their loose outer bark removed. If you click onto the photograph, you will see that the vines and hoops come in two colours: green and brown. For the green vines, all I needed to do was to remove that loose outer bark. However, the brown hoops needed more work since there was a loose, powdery coating beneath that loose bark that also had to be removed. A thorough scraping was all that was needed to finish the preparation.

There are still more vines I cut yesterday that need finishing. And then there are four more grapevine plants that need to be harvested. I hope for more good weather to allow me time to do this.

Harvesting the grapevine vines

Now is the time to harvest the grapevine vines before the snow begins to fall. This photo shows the vines harvested from two grapevine plants that grew over an arch leading to the rear of our home. Each of these will need further processing by hand to remove the loose outer bark. Then a six to eight foot length can be formed into a hoop of one foot or more in diameter. Two such hoops form the frame for a rib basket.


Ready for collection by the city are the thinner, unusable vines.








This photo shows other grapevines I have yet to cut down and prepare for use.







Here is what remains of one of the vines I did cut down.

Preparing "brown" willow.

As Fall approaches, I am beginning to work on the willow at the front of my side garden. Two years ago, I cut these willow shrubs to just above ground level. Anne wanted them to form a hedge or barrier for privacy, so I did not cut them down to ground level again this spring. Instead, I let them grow. Lately, I have begun to harvest from this two-year growth. As you can see, I cut the willow down to waist level from its 8 -12 foot height. the willow on the left is as yet uncut and shows its two-year height.

Here are the remains of the cut willow that proved to be unusable for my basket-making. Most of these branches were too short or had too many branches off the main stem to be useful. I need long and straight "whips" for my basket ribs. I bundled up these waste products and put them at the curb for the green box compost recycling.



For the usable willow whips, I stripped each of its leaves. The green bin was a helpful collection container for these.







The end product after an hour or more of work: "brown" willow. These are now in my storage room where they will dry over the next weeks and months and lose their green colour. I will soak them in water before I can use them in my rib baskets.

The term "brown" willow refers to any willow, whatever its colour, that is harvested and used with its bark still on. "White" willow is willow harvested in the spring, stripped of its bark to reveal its white flesh beneath. "Buff" willow is willow boiled for 8 - 10 hours with its bark on. Its bark is then removed to reveal a beautiful buff colour .

Early harvesting from the vegetable garden

Today I harvested some of the potatoes and carrots I planted in the spring. The potatoes have died back already, and the carrots for the most part got ahead of me when it came to the time to thin them. The thinning time was in the period when I was just beginning to recover from my heart attack. I did manage to do a little thinning and the carrots shown here are from those areas where I did succeed.

Harvesting the willow versus privacy

Here is the result of harvesting the willow this spring season, while safeguarding Anne's desire to use the willow bushes/trees as a privacy fence too. The trash can contains white willow, willow whips stripped of their bark to reveal the white flesh beneath. The greenish tinge here will fade to a soft white as these whips dry.




The willow tree in the fore of this photo is perhaps three years old. It has been allowed to grow without being trimmed to ground level for three years. It does form a significant privacy barrier.






This is the same species of willow with its beautiful yellow bark and its leaves in tight clusters. Selected whips from this bush were cut for white willow. To ready it for stripping, I removed the leaves and then removed the bark. This is easy to do at his stage of growth with that first full flush of leaves being present.




This is another species of willow that grows slender enough whips for me to use as ribs for my rib baskets. I need at least a two foot section of slender willow to use as ribs.






In a few sections of the garden, I was able to cut the willow bushes down to near ground level. From this stool many slender whips will grow ready for next year's harvest.







This is the same species of willow as in the previous photo. It is another privacy barrier so we can sit on our patio without all passers by seeing us. A large number of these whips could have been cut and used for white willow ribs, but this would have opened up the view too much for Anne. Next year these whips will have thickened to much for me to use, and will have too many branches too.

Harvesting the grapevine

Today was the day to begin harvesting the grapvines. Several nights of frost had left the vines with most of the leaves off. They were now ready for me to cut them down to make more hoops for rib baskets.





Today I had enough time to cut down one of the grapevines. The remains of the plant are shown here.







The leaves and the discarded branches here were composted. The leaves went to my composters and the branches to the City's composters.






These are the branches I felt were usable to create the hoops: thick enough and long enough.







This photo shows the next stage in preparing the vines: stripping off the loose outer bark, a laborious process.








Once the vine has had its outer bark removed, it can be formed into a hoop. This is easily done at this stage before the vine branch has dried out.





After an hours work in the sunshine at 9 degreees celcius I had stripped and prepared a total of seven vines. There are many more to come. Two of these hoops are needed to form the core for a rib basket.