Back in Spring I wrote about having to prune our Concord grape vine by breaking several of the buds off with my thumb nail.
I wrote: “…one advantage of pruning just the buds, is that you will end up with a thick network of branches that will help block raiding raccoons from reaching the finished grapes that hang down from the vines.”
It worked. The grapes became ripe in early September and were visited by hungry racoons nightly. They ate a bunch and dropped some, but because of the thick mat of vines, many of the grapes that hung down were too hard for them to reach. The same was true for the birds. We were able to harvest grapes whenever we wanted up until mid October. I know someone who cuts all his grapes off early on and composts most of them to avoid the inevitable mess caused by the coons. Our neighbour, Josee lost his grapes to racoons last year, so this year he also cut his very early.
This pruning adaption has allowed us to share the grape abundance among all our furred, feathered and human friends.