Pruning a Vineyard and Starting Cuttings

Yesterday we took a homeschool field trip to a research farm here in Kentucky.

They invited us to help prune the vines and clean up the vineyard.  What we actually got to do was learn a lot.

This is the farm.  It's really cool.
  They teach people how to do lots of small-scale farming things.  And they do it for free.  Yeah, it's cool.

 The lady in charge assured us that we couldn't hurt the vines by our inexperienced pruning methods.  She must have meant it because she gave us a 10 minute lesson and then turned us loose.

 So, here's a vine in need of a haircut...

 Here's the way it's supposed to look...

Pruning really confuses me for some reason.  She said it's like art.  But, as an artist, I can assure you that it is NOT like art.  It feels different because it's a living thing.  And even if I think it looks better, I may have just killed it.  That's not what art feels like.

But we were getting the hang of it eventually.

So here's what I got to bring home. 

She showed us how to take cuttings from the vines.

And how to get them to grow their own roots.

Now that is some amazing stuff!

I decided to try it out today....

This is all you need to start your own vines:

-fresh cuttings
-a container with drainage holes
-perlite, which is weird styrofoam-like bally stuff
-rooting hormone
-and water

Here's a close-up, if you never saw this stuff before.  I haven't.

Cut one end at a diagonal.

Wet it.

Dip it in the rooting hormone.  Tap it off.

Stick it into the perlite and water it.

There ya go.  Your very own vineyard.

Almost.  Sortof.

She said not to over water it.  Just keep it moist.  In a few weeks, they should get roots and be able to be put into potting soil.  I'll keep ya posted.

Neat, right?