Pruning the Grape Vines

I pruned my vines  a while ago to leave one shoot every 6" to 8" as I had seen this on a pruning video and the idea is not to overload the plants so you end up with a better crop. My dilemma now is do I then just leave one bunch on each shoot and as many leaves as I can. If I do not do this I will be defeating the object of pruning as I will have many more bunches of grapes. I have Googled this and I cannot seem to find anything on the second pruning of the shoots, but it makes sense to do this . 

 

This photo shows the shoot on the right with two bunches so far, do I cut the second one off and also cut off the head of the shoot. I do know that later on I have to also thin out the bunches, less is more as they say!

Vines to prune

Unfortunately a fox killed our 3 chickens last month, so we have decided not to get any more. These are the first lot of chickens that we have lost to foxes in 5 years, but having to lock them up at night and let them out first thing in the morning was getting a bit of a pain. However, we will miss our own lovely fresh eggs with bright yellow yokes.

We have decided the turn the old chicken run into another vegetable patch as the soil should be well enriched, I have planted out some cape gooseberries to see how they do outside, also some broccoli and Brussels sprouts   and sown some French beans. The end near the lawn I have sown a strip of wild flowers, so we will see if they can compete against the weeds that will eventually come up with them.

The new Veg patch

Last weekend was another bombshell as our Appaloosa Dill had to be put down. She  had various problems over the years, I think mainly due to her past hard life with her previous owners. She was such a gently giant and so well natured, we will miss her so much. Anna, our French trotter has been going crazy this past week missing her soul mate. So she has had lots of treats and scratches to show we care and we even gave her a nice grooming and a shower on Sunday as it was so hot.

Anna and Dill