Champlain Valley - Grapemans' vineyard - Planting to small winery

[OilnH2O]

Hey, Rich -- all this about fertilizer makes me curious. Last fall, a friend brought me some "Yellowstone Gold" -- just a made up name for going out and picking up the dried "cow pies" of bison, which has a golden brown color. He swears by it and says "everyone" uses it in their gardens and it is "better than Miracle Grow." I have little experience with natural fertilizers such as this, and would like to try it out but before I throw caution to the winds and just spread it around, I was curious if you had some insights?

Dave

 

[grapeman]

Whenever you have manure to apply it is preferable to man made or formulated fertilizers. The manure as long as it is rotted or composted provides a safe source of nutrients and organic matter. Now raw driedbison patties, I have no idea about........................ There aren't a lot ofbison around here, although there are some!

 

[grapeman]

I was going to post some pictures using Google Chrome, but every time I try to open it, it closes again 1 second later. So I will post a few pictures using IE - slow but it works.




Things are growing well, but slowly with an overall coolish spring. It was 43 here last night but it was 39 breaking a record again for Plattsburgh. Things are really going to get busy here very soon with training. It was nice Saturday so I worked the weed patrol and got things pretty clean.


Here are a couple shots showing the young vines planted this spring. Notice the lack of trellis. I am not rushing the trellisso that I can use the tiller doing a figure 8 around them. That gets rid of the bulk of the weeds and grass and then the harrow or cultivator cleans out the middles.

The latter pictures are from the new vineyard site. That one has 22 row so far with 24 vines in each at 9x6 foot spacing running north and south. The way the field is situated, it isn't shaded any part of the day even with all the big pine trees around. It is made up mostly of white wine grapes.

 

[grapeman]

Splitting the post so I don't have problems, here are some pictures of the growing older vines.


Frontenac on VSP and then one of them modified to 4 Arm-Kniffen.

Leon Millot is a bit behind the frontenac

And then the LaCrosse

 

[fivebk]

Appleman,
Thanks for the update and of course all the pics. I can only hope that someday my little vineyard will have vines in it that look as good as yours. Where do you find the time to take care of all that and work too. As slow as I move with my bad back I could not even begin to care for that many grapes. I talked to a lady from a local nursery the other day and she said that she had heard that I wae trying to grow grapes. They had planted 3.5 to 4 acres of grapes about 6 years ago thinking a newly started winery was going to buy the plants from them . Well long story short the deal fell through and they have all those vines that are going to waste. They are now grown up with trees, weeds, etc. She said that they do produce some grapes and if I wanted some this fall to have at them. I also asked about getting some cuttings to start in my own vineyard, and she said I could have all the cuttings I wanted. I don't know how to start them but I asked anyway GO FIGURE!!! So maybe I may have some fresh grapes to play with this fall. The two varieties she has are Foch and LaCrosse.

 

[JWMINNESOTA]

Appleman, that must be one of the most peaceful places on earth!

 

[grapeman]

It seems that way at times, more now than when I was younger. It is my little vineyard Hid-In-Pines and remains fairly tranquil and quiet, except when Harleys drive by or the ******* next door brays half the day, or cars speed by, or the helicopter transports for hospitals go over, or the normal pot surveillance(helicopter) or the Homeland Security BlackHawk goes over. But alas they are all vey quiet compared to the B-52s, KC-135 tankers or even the FB-111s going supersonic while the base was in Plattsburgh.

It really is peaceful though and I enjoy it immensely or I wouldn't do it.

 

[grapeman]

I tried an interesting little experiment about a week ago. The Chardonel that had frozen so badly were generally all starting to grow back fromground to about 16 inches above ground and had about 2-3 inches of growth. I had been wondering if the old dead stuff should be pruned off, so I cut two canes off on the end vine down to just above some new growth. They started dripping profusely. What would happen?


I checked in on it today. The vine I cut is still at two to three inches of growth. The vines below the cuts were black with old sap. All the rest of the vines in the row I haven't touched have 12 to 18 inches of new growth on multiple shoots.


I guess I will just let the winterkilled vines recover on their own this year and prune back to good new canes at the end of the growing season when they go dormant. Then I will wait and see how they fare over next winter!

 

[bilbo-in-maine]

Rich - that is a good experiment. I have often noticed after pruning that where new vine growth, buds chiefly, is saturated by bleeding sap from pruning cuts, the new growth appears to just about stop for awhile. It is definitely retarded in progressing. Right now I have buds that have pushed only two inches while the most advanced new growth is maybe two feet. Dormant pruning would seem to be the best assurance that new spring growth will not be held back, although in the cold north we take a chance in doing the entire pruning in February or March and not have a chance later to tweak for bud kill.

 

[AlFulchino]

i have noted a similar thing...so when my landot was bud killed above the snow line i let the old wood stand....currently i am letting as many as 10 of the 20 of so shoots grow and flourish so as to not retard any food production for our relatively short growing season....with time i will reduce the number of canes to 3-4






has anyone ever noted cane/cordon dieback that was caused by something other than eutypa?


i have noted this on a few vines and it ***appears*** to be related to one of 2 or 3 things....the spring pruning caused the wood around the buds to dry out but not enough that the bud didnt produce some small leaves and a small cluster or two before ultimately dieback...another possibility is only the lower canewood was damaged by cold weather and the abovebuds survived to release their goods but no continued flow of sap occurred...a third possibility that i have is that some vines had an abundance of bud development at the base of the vine even though i did a spring bud rub off..sometimes some vines send a lot more out after you leave that vine..and perhaps they sap the flow of water and nutrients from the above cane/cordons

 

[Scott]

It seems that way at times, more now than when I was younger. It is my little vineyard Hid-In-Pines and remains fairly tranquil and quiet, except when Harleys drive by or the ******* next door brays half the day, or cars speed by, or the helicopter transports for hospitals go over, or the normal pot surveillance(helicopter) or the Homeland Security BlackHawk goes over. But alas they are all vey quiet compared to the B-52s, KC-135 tankers or even the FB-111s going supersonic while the base was in Plattsburgh.

Appleman it sounds like you have alot of fans just checking on your progress. Popular man

 

[grapeman]

I sure as heck couldn't grow weed and get away with it! It's funny though, one fellow vineyardist here in the area stopped by this spring to get the Edelweiss vines I decided not to plant (about 70 of them). The first thing out of his mouth when he got out of his car was, "Man what a spot to grow pot!" Yes the area does grow it well and has since the early 1900's, but I sure as heck wouldn't try it!

 

[grapeman]

"Houston, We have Bloom!"


I worked at Willsboro today and noted the very first blooming grapes today. Just a very few. This evening I was tucking Frontenac grapes, and I have bloom at home also - just a smattering here and there. It turned out sunny today which wasn't predicted and the grapes loved it. They are just booming! Tomorrow should be sunny also and that will open quite a few blossoms! YEAH!


I tried to take a few pictures today of the delicate blossoms and will see if they are worth posting tomorrow when I will be in the office.

 

[grapeman]

I don't have any pictures to post today because the grape vines ate the camera!

I wanted to update this a bit. It has continued cloudy and gloomy for about three quarters of the month of June with just a few sunny days here and there. The clouds and rain continues to come from the East - which usually only happens during big winter snowstorms. We have actually gotten the rains at just about ideal times and only have three inches so far for the month at my place- not bad!


The vines are eating up the 80 degree weather even with the clouds. The days the sun shines, you can hear and see the vines grow. Bloom continues with some varieties and is done with some and bb shot size berries formed. It is impossible to keep up with tucking and tying the vines to keep them manicured.


Weeds are also loving the weather. I am in need of a roundup application to get the weeds under some of the vines, but now need to worry about drift onto the green vegetation. I continue to run the tiller through the newly planted vines doing the figure 8 pattern. I tyed up the growth in them on Saturday.


How is everyone else doing battling the elements this year?

 

[bilbo-in-maine]

Hey, thanks for asking, Rich!

I have your same run of clouds and gloom, approaching eight inches of rain for the month, but temps in low 60's is usual and today we rose to 57 degrees.

All varieties have set flowers, some flowers have bloomed, but no BB's yet. I've only gotten two sprays done so far but don't see any rampant disease yet

The season seems so delayed that I will be very pleasantly surprised if I get a ripe crop in September/October, but we'll only know when the time comes. This growing season is being an interesting experience in the unknown.

 

[grapeman]

It continues to be gloomy and rainy here at the vineyard. I took some pictures in spite of the rain and will try to get some more if it ever quits raining. The vines are ranging from full bloom to bb size grapes depending on the variety. I have a ton of training to do and here is a picture to demonstrate that.

Here are some others going from bloom to post bloom. The larger ones are Frontenac and will certainly need thinning.

 

[bilbo-in-maine]

Ooof, looking at that first picture, I'd say you have your work cut out Rich. Are those vines Frontenac by any chance? They ARE vigorous. Do you pull most laterals? What is your training program?

The sun made an appearance here this afternoon. I really had forgotten what it looks like, we have been so gloomy so long. I have some flowers on St. Croix that blossomed about two weeks ago and are now crumbling away at the ends due to rot. Other varieties appear to have held on better. I'm not sure whether St. Pepin managed to get fertilized in this weather. Let me know how yours fared.
Bill

 

[grapeman]

Yes Bill they are Frontenac. They are trained to a 4-Arm Kniffen system as part of my Training Trial. I have to try to decide on the best way to handle things. I haven't butchered them yet because I wanted to leave too many grapes and shoots on them to try to slow vigor. I was going to tackle them this week, but the weather didn't cooperate- again. By the way, there are no laterals to speak of yet. That's why I haven't shoot thinned or hedged yet. That forces lateral development and make an even denser jungle. Again this year, VSP seems to be a better and easier way to handle the Frontenac, and hopefully when I am done, I will have some figures to back it up. I will also be adding in shoot thinning vs. cluster thinning, vs. a check. They will all get a dose of leaf pulling. As part of the trial data, I am collecting time needed for canopy management for each system.


The St Pepin look pretty good so far. Time will tell if they set good or not. We have actually had some pretty decent pollination weather. Mild breezes, some sun and then afternoon thunderstorms most days.

 

[Wade E]

If it keeps up with this crappy weather like this do you think itll be a bad year fro grapes, they usually do way better with dry seasons dont they Rich.

 

[grapeman]

Different years weather is what gives us great and not so great vintages. The trick is to make the best wine with what the weather gives you. Do the best you can with that weather Mother Nature dishes out and grow the best grapes you can. But then you may need to adjust a few things with the grapes when it is harvest time. I prefer dryish weather, but other that getting depressed with clouds and gloom, we aren't that wet yet. It takes a lot more rain with the warmer weather to saturate things than it does in the spring or autumn.