Too Much Nice Weather

Last weekend we visited Adam. In the spirit of a budding tropical fruit fanatic, he added a mango and Barbados Cherry, and this weekend he followed up with jaboticaba and avocado. A winter storm forced us to stay an extra day, so we went fishing with Bryan of Southern Thunder Fishing Charters.

Today it's sunny and 55F, the day after the winter solstice. Lisa and I took to the greenhouse in T-shirts for a day of cleanup, repotting, and the remainder of the greenhouse winter insulation.

Jake and I put the film up on the roof at Thanksgiving. It was so difficult that I almost resolved that this would be my last greenhouse winter. But I have a new idea, one that will not require this tiresome effort every year. Stay tuned in the spring for an update.

For now we're going with 0.7mil film again. We finally got the north and south ends sealed up today and it's a better job that the last couple of years, with less infiltration.

The citrus are generally doing well. One lime is in intensive care, but we have good crops of Persian lime, kumquat, calamondin, and satsuma.

I fired up the heat map for a few of the plants which aren't thriving.

Kari didn't do well in the pot over the summer and hasn't done any better in the greenhouse. So we moved it into the ground in the center bed and gave it a couple of good shovels worth of tasty compost.

Loquat is blooming, and a couple of the mangoes look like they are about to bloom as well.

Our forecast is for highs in the 50s to 60s the next several days. I have some wine work to do ahead of the KC Cellarmasters Annual Wine Classic, it will be tough to hide out in the basement when it is so nice outside.

Things I Wish I'd Known - Door Hinges

Filed under "things I wish I'd known 20 years ago" is the method of adjusting door hinges.

I tried this on the door out to the pool and it worked like a charm. The threshold for the screen door is bowed however, so I had to resort to other methods to get the screen door to close. After taking it down and putting it back about 10 times, I finally shimmed the entire thing up by about 1mm using some washers in the hinges.

Reclaiming the Front of the House

Yesterday weather-wise was miserable, made much better by a very nice Wolverine win over Notre Dame. But Sunday was beautiful, sunny with a high around 65F. Lisa and I took the opportunity to tame the yews.

We probably should prune the yews annually but somehow we don't get around to it every year. This time the Harry Lauder Walking Stick had gotten so big that between the tree and the yews, we couldn't see out of the dining room window. Today it got the Husqvarna treatment, as did the boxwoods.

 

Front of the house, before:

After:

Before:

After:

And the obligatory food picture - this is Brian's "Critter Gumbo" from Thursday night band practice. It had pheasant, rabbit, shrimp; greens with salted pork shoulder; homemade applesauce, and cornbread. The band played well Thursday night.

Packing the Greenhouse

Winter approaches, and once again everything must come inside or get left behind. This year, we say goodbye to Plumeria pudica. The plant makes very fragrant white flowers, but it refuses to solidly root in the pot and as a result it constantly tips over and grow awkwardly. We made some interesting plumeria wine from its flowers but said wine ruined us on Traminette. So long, P. pudica.

We also bid adieu to Psidium myrtoides, purple guava. I grew two trees from seeds brought from Puerto Rico. I managed with great difficulty to prune and stake these into a tree-like form, and they got to around 5 feet. But theses trees also refused to firmly root in the pot and required constant staking. Worse, the marble-sized fruit were not worthy of wine or anything else. The smell reminded me of something between motor oil and skunk, and they taste was bitter. 

Some of the plants in the south window did not handle the transition well. The loquat and one of the sapodillas will lose some leaves. I walked in Thursday morning to find one contributing cause - no heat. It was 46F inside. I didn't have time to troubleshoot until Saturday, and finally found the culprits.

A replacement thermocouple

What you can find on Amazon for $9 is $36 at the local hardware store. I coughed up the money for the only one in stock, and I had the north furnace going in about 10 minutes. The second one is coming from Amazon in a week, we'll get by until then with one furnace.

There were a couple of nice fruit this week. We brought home the largest guava to date, this one nearly baseball sized. Noel's Big Red sugar apple was sweet and tasty, even if small and seedy.

A tour:

Restful Weekends

The harvest is over. I have fruit in the freezer for a few more wines - passion fruit, acerola, pawpaw, jaboticaba - but these will be small, mostly one gallon batches. We're going to let it cool off a bit more before kicking those wines off.

The Foch and Frontenac are holding their color so far and tasting very good if not almost a little bit too fruit forward. I was concerned about the acid, but the malolactic finished in record time and the pH readings look decent at 3.57-3.60. They've received their KMS doses with 100% adjustments. I have two 5-gallon barrels on the way for aging this wine. Hopefully this will concentrate them and add some complexity.

There is significant amount of crown gall in the vineyard, affecting mainly the Chambourcin and particularly the Norton. I'm seriously considering removing all but 1/2 row of Norton and replanting Arandell and Petite Pearl. The Missouri State Grape has proven very disappointing.

We didn't aggressively pursue the pawpaws this year, instead leaving some for the critters. But Garry texted me looking for some ingredients for specials, and we sent him some pawpaws, lemongrass, and guava. We could not resist going to Bek's to see what Danny did with them, and we were not disappointed.

Pork chop and apple fritter with pawpaw rum sauce

Wahoo with lemongrass and guava gastrique

And we'll leave you with this guy, who's been hanging around the yard for a few weeks. I wonder if he isn't responsible for some of the grape losses, he looks pretty fat and happy.

2019 Wines - Chapter 8 - Vignoles

Our generous neighbor Bill has 10 acres of vines. This year, he didn't have enough Vignoles to bring in a mechanical picker. I got a last minute call - I was welcome to as much Vignoles as I could find.

I didn't find much. Most of the grapes were rotten unfortunately. But I did scrounge up about 70# of decent grapes. The starting numbers were acceptable with no adjustments - pH 3.1 and SG 1.100.

I whole cluster pressed, cold settled for a day, then rewarmed, added 10g Opti White, 2t pectic, then pitched QA 23 with GoFerm. The fermentation started pretty slowly, but after a couple of days it was rolling. 6g bentonite added on day 3. By day 7 it was down to 1.020 and was racked to carboy.

The last batch of Vignoles I made started pretty high acidity and I was not knowledgeable enough to make the needed corrections. This batch is much more promising. Thanks Bill!

2019 Wines - Chapter 7 - Chambourcin Rosé

The first time I made Chambourcin in 2016 I sourced the grapes from our very generous neighbor Bill. I made a red wine which turned out very nicely and took a medal at the KC Cellarmasters Wine Classic. It has aged well and would have probably scored better had I waited another year.

But my Chambourcin this year seemed to want to be a rosé. The numbers lagged in part I think because the vines are young (year 3) and also because, as with the Chardonel, they were overcropped.  Next year, more thinning, more leaf pulling. But this year, rosé it is.

We picked on 9/5. Destemmed, crushed, and pressed, yielding 9.75gal of must. TA 10.8, pH 2/77, SG 1.070. I cold settled for two days, then rewarmed, chaptalized with 1937g sugar to 1.090(est). 20g Opti White, 10g Booster Blanc, 4.5t tannin for color stability, 4.5t pectic enzyme, and 48g KHCO3 to move the pH to 3.05. Then QA 23 with GoFerm and we were winemaking.

I step fed per protocol and added 15g bentonite on day 3. By day 7 it was down to 1.020, so it was moved to carboy. Two days later, just like the Chardonel, it was dry, so it was racked and sulfited.

This is Lisa's 2019 rosé. Fingers crossed!