A few months ago I've noticed a local bird we called a Piet Patat eating one little bunch of grapes after the other, and I then realized that I have to make a plan to have any grape crops for myself and family in future.
The only things I had on hand were three discarded very old pieces of 40% shade-nets which my gardener Eric and myself 'stitched' together using black cable ties. The pieces were just big enough to cover the existing young grape vine which I've planted a year ago on a raised bed, just to form a tunnel above ground. The vine is held up with shade-net twine and so far so good, without collapsing.
This seemed to be successful and we had no more birds trying their best to get the grapes through the shade-net, and the grapes are now about 1cm in size, hoping to harvest the old fashioned black grapes in a month or two.
Just before enclosing this grape vine, I cut four by 1m pieces to be used as cuttings to grow a few new vines from this grape vine.
These four cuttings were placed in a large bottle with water and the water was replaced with fresh water every second day, to encourage the roots to form. After a month of doing this procedure, I've notice that all the cuttings have dried up, loosing all their leaves, and no roots had formed yet.
I was just one the point of throwing in the towel but decided to give it another month before throwing these cuttings away, changing the water one more time and forget it for a month.
After a month I came back to this experiment and discovered to my utter amazement that one cutting had rooted with a root of about 20cm long, whilst the other three remained rootless.
I've then planted all four cuttings into a big pot and placed it next to the grape vine to grow further.
Great was my excitement after one month on discovering a 30cm plant with a little bunch of grapes hanging from the first cutting which had the root on. The other three cuttings all developed leaves and should follow the first cutting too in growing into healthy vines.
I will let these cuttings grow a bit bigger before looking for another place to transplant and grow more vines in my garden.
You should by now have guessed what my motto is:
NEVER GIVE UP, BE PATIENT, AND A MIRACLE MAY HAPPEN TO YOU TOO!
NATALIE E. ROWLES
