- We are in a beautiful garden oasis in Layton, Utah.

Jessica Luckert, a wonderful and incredible gardener, is going to show us how she cares for her grape plants.

(upbeat music) And all the tips and tricks that she has in harvesting and making sure that they are as beautiful as you would want in any garden.

I really wanna hear about your grapes because I'm super jealous of your trellis.

So can you give us a little backstory on your grapes?

- Okay, I've wanted grapes for a long time, but I didn't know where to grow 'em.

I'm just on a tiny quarter acre, so there's not always a lot of space and this is the north side.

So I wanted to not block out any sun.

So I thought what about the front?

And I talked to my husband and a couple years later he feel this arch for me.

- It is gorgeous.

It is such a great trellis and arbor in everything.

So Jessica how many different varieties are you growing and what types?

- So I have a canadice, hemrod, two concord seedless grapes, a Neptune, and a red Swenson.

The Neptune is doing the best.

It already has like six grape clusters on it.

- So I'm really excited about that one this year.

- So you only have a couple years on these grapes but soon you are gonna be swimming in grape juice.

Are you ready for it?

- Oh yes.

- And tell me what you're doing as far as care and fertilizer to get them growing on this trellis.

- I started with a lot of compost in that area.

'Cause again clay soil, it was not good in the front.

Most of the compost and wood chips and leaves and everything were in the back of the garden.

So a lot more compost, some wood chips on top to keep them happy and moist 'cause we live in a very dry area.

And then I just use like an organic fruit tree fertilizer and vine fertilizer each year to help them grow.

- Awesome, so you do that in the spring?

- Yes, usually in the spring, but I will give a couple more helpings when I think about it.

- Because obviously beyond good soil and working on that you have to have some good water.

So tell me what your watering system is and what has worked for you.

- So again I started with the sprinklers.

- It works okay, but not great.

It also leads to a lot of weeds.

But in the rest of the garden I have micro sprayers in the beds and I have drip lines through the, I should say the raised beds and then through the in ground beds drip lines.

So the drip system I think is really the way to go.

The grapes actually don't have any water on them.

- Oh.

- Because the lawn gets watered and then my my lawn goes downhill.

- That's perfect.

- And the grapes don't like a lot of water.

They don't like their feet wet.

So I purposely raised up each part where the grapes is.

You can kind of see that in the garden.

- Awesome, yeah.

That's a great thing in Utah grapes actually do really well because they're fairly drought tolerant especially once they're established.

Pest wise I find I continuously get leaf miners.

Do you have leaf miner problem or what kind of pest do you see on your grapes?

- I do get a couple of leaf miners but they like my Swiss chard more.

- Oh.

I would rather take them on my Swiss chard personally but.

- Maybe that's a trap crop.

I'm not sure.

(gentle music) - Harvest wise what are you planning to do with all these grapes?

- I think we're gonna do raisins.

We're gonna, there's a lot of table grapes in here, so we'll just eat.

'em fresh and we'll see.

I can too so maybe we'll do some canning.

- Well I tell you, especially with your kids you're gonna find them.

They're just gonna gobble those things down 'cause they're so sweet.

They're sweeter than candy.

So that's super exciting.

(upbeat music) Jessica, thank you so much for inviting us to your beautiful garden.

It is such a joy to see.

Do you have any advice that you would tell our, our viewers about gardening?

- I would say start small, start somewhere.

It's okay if you just have a tiny little area in your backyard or some potted plants or anything and then it can grow from there.

You know this didn't happen overnight.

I've been gardening for over 10 years and this is over eight years worth of work.

So you know just start small and do what you can and hopefully it will grow into something that you absolutely love.

- I love that.

Thank you Jessica.

Truly, this was so fantastic.

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(upbeat music)