DIY Ugly Fence Fix

Each time we moved, we've bought a fixer-upper house. And most of the things we've had to fix ourselves. But sometimes, what I don't like isn't "broken," it's just ugly.

One thing I hate is that a lot of the fencing around the house is chain link. So no privacy and super, super ugly. At first I planted climbing roses. They were beautiful. A wall of roses. And then, they got rose rosette disease (also known as "witches broom"), which is untreatable and kills the plants.

So once again I had an ugly fence. And because of the residual effects of the disease, I couldn't plant more roses. But I needed something that formed a wall. Something beautiful that would turn a minus into a plus.

And then it hit me. Grapes. But we'd tried grapes before in a different area of the yard. It was a disaster.So I researched grape growing on Google. And bought plants at WalMart (I amended the soil--which is clay and pebbles with top soil and composted steer manure, i.e., cheap fertilizer). And my husband built a double cordon system. It sounds fancy, but it's basically eight feet posts buried about 16 inches into the ground with two levels of heavy gauge wire strung between them.

Last year, we followed simple double cordon guidelines and cut off extraneous vines as the plants grew. This summer, we had grapes. It was a lovely surprise because we weren't supposed to get grapes until next year.

To the right are Concord grapes, which we've already eaten. Small (probably because they weren't supposed to bear this year) but delicious.

To the left are red flames grapes. I can't wait for them to ripen.

And there's nothing more wonderful than seeing a wall of grapes. So bless that ugly chain link fence, without it the grapes wouldn't have the free air circulation and heavy sunlight that they love.

BTW, If you read last week's post about the 52 year old towels, one Facebook commenter mentioned that she has towels bought in 1945 that are in great shape. Wow, that's 69 years!