Harvested my first Concord grapes this year about 20 hand sized bunches. Made 8 pints of jelly from them. Excited for next years harvest to be a lot bigger!
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Hey Tim, Those look great! Nothing quite like the distinctive flavor of Concord grapes. They ripen unevenly here in Georgia (July) don`t think they enjoy our heat. Thanks for sharingā¦your harvests should get bigger and better in the future. Good growing, Randy/GA
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The smell generated from Concords being processed is something that Iād like to have year round instead of once/year.
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Iāll second that! I love concords. Iām not a huge fan of the jelly, but I love the way they taste and smell fresh. I picked them on the way to work and when I got home just about every day for about 3 weeks. Unfortunately they developed an odd taste once they had been on the vine too long. I donāt know if a few unseasonably cool nights caused it, or if they just didnāt enjoy a whole month of hang time. This is the first season I had enough grapes and did a good enough job netting to actually have them hang after ripening.
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I picked them a little early because of bird pressure etc. I do love eating them fresh as well. Hopefully next year Iāll get a larger crop that I can eat half and process half!
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Bird net is definitely a must here. The flavor benefits from a week of hang timeā¦but the crop size sure dwindles! One thing I love about them is how quickly the vines grow into producing. You should get a much larger crop each year until they mature. Also, dormant cuttings do pretty well if you need more vines on the cheap.
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im very tempted to do grapes but my dogs do have a taste for them so need to figure out a plan to stop that. Already had an emergency vetvisit take 4k to help the younger dog when we had a bag full of raisins (we didnt know about the raisins) from a too good to go from a bakery.
Have multiple hydrogen peroxide bottles at home with a squirting/no needle syringe lol. 5ml per 10lb of weight. You can safely induce vomiting up to 45 minutes to 1 hours of ingestion depending on the dog. Mine also loves grapes and will follow my 2 year old around waiting for treats if she sees me preoccupied. Literally 1 grape will give her the poops so sticking them in the bath/shower with a syringe and a bottle of peroxide has been a typical every 3-6 months activity for us lol. Also sometimes you can give your dogs ptsd too so if they get close to the item you donāt want them to eat, you can pull a bottle of hydrogen peroxide by their nose and remind them what will have to happen if they eat it. I did this with my last dog a few times when he developed a taste for socks and he stopped eating socks after the second time he ate one and then me reminding him with the bottle by his nose every time he was about to chomp on one.
** donāt ever put hydrogen peroxide on their nose but you can squeeze the bottle so that the scent is wiffed into the air a few times when they get near an item you donāt want them to eat. Had to edit to add this and this is what i mean by ābottle by their noseā.
Unfortunatelt one of my dogs has been induced one too many times and will bite if we try it again. Only way we can make it happen is soaking peanut butter sandwiches in it. (A hack for those with difficult dogs)
Grapes are super toxic to dogs sadly.
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I have neglected to prune my Concords for two years, but this year they were so loaded I knew I had to make time to pick them. I process them in a steamerāthe best way I have found to make the juice. Since my grapes are inside my fenced orchard, I find the birds like the apples better than grapes. But our hot, hot Michigan summer resulted in the very sweetest juice this season. Am making apple-juice and grape-apple juice with varying amounts of both fruits. Itāll be fun to see what jelly results. This will have to be what I call āwinter workā since apple harvest and dehyrating are waiting.
I used a steam juicer as well and then made jelly from there. Worked out great. Since it first year getting berries etc I had smaller tills of elderberry and currants so I steam juiced ta small batch of mixed jam too and it came out amazing! Canāt wait until next year when I should be able to put up a good account of grape juice!
Iāve used a steamer and Squeezo for grapes. We like pulp in our juice, but the steamer is less work.
Not sure how my steamer will work with currants, or elderberries. The holes in the basket that holds the fruit are bigger than my elderberries tend to be.