Hello friends,

Our grapevine grows in the southeast corner of the backyard, trailing along a fence that has definitely seen better days. The fence has developed quite a lean away from the garden, and I'm fairly sure the only thing keeping it upright at this point is the grapevine itself.

Our eventual plan is to replace the east-side fence and hedges and build a new fence along that entire property boundary. This would give me a new section of usable garden—aka somewhere else to plant even more dahlias. Unfortunately, that's not a project we can tackle at the moment, so for now we're making the best of what we have.

With the fence at risk of falling and taking the grapevine with it, I allowed some of the new shoots growing from its base to develop last season. My plan was to establish a second section of grapevine along the southern fence as a backup. This fence gets full sun throughout the day, which should also provide better growing conditions for the grapes.

With the young vines lying on the ground for most of the winter, it was time to get them established along the southern fence. Hubby and I headed to our local Bunnings and picked up a 10-metre roll of wire netting. On a sunny winter afternoon, we unwound the netting along the fence and secured it in place with staple nails and a hammer.

After carefully untangling the young vines, it didn't take long to tie them up in three rows along the new trellis.

And I'm very pleased with the result. We now have a backup plan for the grapevine if the east-side fence eventually falls down, and in the meantime, the new vines should give us more grapes. It's a small job, but it has given our grapevine a much better growing space and hopefully a more secure future in the garden.

Have a wonderful day

Julie-Ann

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Tags: 2026, Garden, Garden Project, Gardening, Grape, Grapevine, Winter