North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

["Mark & Helen Angermayer" <hangermayer@isp.com>]

Rivka wrote:

 

"Could excess nutrients be the problem? Compost is very good; but straight compost may be too much of a good thing. The plant may be putting all that energy into huge amounts of vegetative growth, and not concentrating enough on the fruit."

 

That's certainly a possibility, although last year I put them on the edge of the pile and trained the vines to grow inward, so they weren't getting the full effect of the compost.  I've tried them before in the garden with no compost and it didn't work well for me.  Couldn't keep up with the weeding and I got a lot of end rot.

 

The compost pile is made up mostly of leaves and brush, some hay, and some grass clippings.  Its footprint is about 1000 sqft. and growing.  Smells very sweet and if you dig down it's very black and humus'y looking.  Tons of earthworms and grubs, of very large size.  Maybe that's it!  I should start raising earthworms, 'cept I don't know how they taste.

 

Mark

KS