First Watermelon of Season 2019

Picked Charleston Gray watermelon. My watermelon crop this season is not good, it looks like I will only get 4 melons this year compared to 50 from last year. This crop did not get affected by fungus like last year. I planted different varieties of watermelon and also cantaloupes.

About 20 cantaloupes were in the field, most are the size of softballs. Two got to be about volleyball size but deer have started eating on them.
I also picked some cherry tomatoes and Concord grapes. Most of the Concord grapes were eaten by deer. I also picked a basil leaf.

Creating Grape Juice

The steps to making grape juice is not too difficult. It does require quite a bit of work though.

1) First harvest your grapes, in my case I used Concord grapes. I then soak the grapes in a large 5 gallon bucket to get rid of bugs and other debris.

2) Next the good grapes need to be removed from the stem and placed in containers.

3) Once the grapes are separated, wash them and them place them in a container to be crushed. I used a large metal bowl. You want to separate the skins from the inner pulp while at the same extracting the sweet juice from the grapes.

4) Dump the crushed grapes into a large metal pot for cooking. Cook the grapes on low medium to help extract more juice. Do not let them boil though. Stir and crush some more grapes to maximize juice production. Heat for 10-15 minutes on the stove.

5) Obtain another large container. I metal cooking pot and strained the heated grape pulp with a wire mesh strainer.

6) The mesh will get clogged with pulp so it needs to be cleaned out from time to time.

7) Have another container to discard used grape pulp into. I composted the grape pulp when I was done.

8) I used a 64 ounce (8 cup) Pyrex measuring bowl to collect the grape juice.

The 10 gallons for grapes picked ending up producing about 150 ounces or about 1.2 gallons of organic grape juice. I consider them organic since I did not use fertilizers or pesticides on the grape plants. It took two people about 30 minutes to pick the grapes. Another two people about 2 hours to clean and de-stem the grapes. It probably took one person about 90 minutes to extract the grape juice and clean up the kitchen.

The grape juice was stored in the refrigerator in three containers and consumed over a 3 week period. There was some sediment settling at the bottom of the pitchers during this time.

The juice produced was a little murky, for a clearer juice like one finds in the store, a cloth strainer might be used.

Processing Concord Grapes

Back in late August 2013, my family and I harvested enough Concord grapes to fit in 2 five gallon buckets. Once the grapes were picked I soaked them water for several hours so the bugs would float off of them. This year's crop was pretty good with hardly any insects and I don't use pesticides on the crop.
My intention was to produce grape juice so we separated the edible grapes from their stems.

After sorting we ended up with 4 containers of grapes to turn into juice.
Below are pictures of some of the grapes that were picked.

Concord Grapes Getting Ripe

It does not look like the grape harvest will be has large as last year. I am not sure if the late pruning or freeze had an effect or just the mild summer is the cause. I look forward to some homemade grape juice though.

Elsewhere in the garden, two Sugar Baby watermelons are maturing.

Concord Grapes

The Concord grapes are getting to be the right size now they just need to ripen. These grapes are growing in southern Indiana. Once they are ripe I will turn them into organic grape juice.

Making Concord Grape Jelly

I made my first batch of concord grape jelly earlier in the week. As the process moved along I took some pictures of some of the steps.

Here are the cleaned, ripe grapes taken from the stem. I weighed them at a little over 9 pounds.


The recipe called for taking about 4 pounds of grapes and mashing them with a potato masher to get the pulp and skins separate.


I then placed the mashed grapes in a pot and cooked them till they boiled and then simmered them for about 10 minutes.

After they started boiling, the grapes look like this. A purple, frothy mixture that is ready to be strained.

I used a screen to filter the juice out since I could not find any cheesecloth in the store. It takes about 10-20 minutes to strain. I mixed the grapes around from time to time to get the juice flowing.

This picture shows heated grapes being strained or waiting to be strained.

Here is about 32 ounces of grape juice with out any sweetener. I did not take pictures of the boiled lids, the sterilizing of the canning jars, the adding of the pectin and sugar to the grape juice, the mixing of 4 cups of sugar to the pectin/grape mixture. Also I could of taken picture of pouring of jelly into the jars but it would be hard to hold the camera and pour jelly at the same time.

The jars have jelly in them with lids and screws applied. I then boiled the jars for 5-10 minutes and then removed them with tongs. They jelly then cooled off.

I had some jelly left over that did not fill an entire jar so I poured in this one and used it to make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.

It is a lot of work to make jelly and grape juice but rewarding to have fresh food. In retrospect, I could have gone to the store and bought some jars of jelly for about $5-10.

Looking Toward the Sky and Seeing Grapes

Here are some ripe grapes ready to be picked. I picked about 80% of the grapes on the 6 plants growing. I filled two plastic grocery bags with grapes and they weighed in at 21 pounds (about 9.5 kgs).

Here are all the clean ripe grapes with stems laid out on the counter.

Concord Grape Pictures

Close up image of some Concord Grapes grown in southern Indiana. These grapes are at the top of a hill in a field that gets a good deal of sun. Another set of grapes grow on a fence row next to a flower garden and they do not get as much sun. As a result, those grapes are mostly green or light purplish-pink.

A side view of the grapes that were soaked in water and had the bad/green grapes removed. You can see the container in the with the ripe grapes I beginning to separate from the stems.

More Pictures of Concord Grapes

Here is a closer look at cleaned Concord grapes still on the stem. Later they were picked off the stems and put in containers.

Concord Grapes Harvested

Here is a picture of some Concord Grapes grown in Memphis, Indiana right before they were picked.
Here are some of the grapes on a kitchen counter. I soaked them in water for several hours to clear the bugs off of them. Next, I picked off the shriveled, damaged, and green grapes from the stems. After this, I picked the ripe grapes off the stems and placed them in containers.



Here is another picture of hanging grapes.

Almost Ripe Concord Grapes

When I get near the grapes now, the smell reminds me of grape jelly.

They are really starting to get ripe on the vine and hopefully there will be enough to make some jelly.

Concord Grapes Getting Riper

Here are some Concord grapes which are almost fully ripe.

I have been eating some of the ripe ones and they are good.

Not sure if there is enough to make jelly or not though.

Ripening Grapes

The grapes are looking good this year. You can see one grape is getting ripe.

Update on Concord Grapes

The grape harvest looks to be a good one this year. The grapes are still green but there are a lot of them. The plants are getting bigger and it is looking nice.

Growing Concord Grapes

The grapes are plentiful this year but we will see if it stays that way by harvest time.

The cherry harvest was good so far with enough for 4 pies.