Champlain Valley - Grapemans' vineyard - Planting to small winery

[grapeman]

No rain today, but there are severe thunderstorms predicted to be scattered. The thermometer next to me is reading 102.9 at this moment. The sensor is outside my office on the back wall- out of the sun. The vineyard sensor in a shadebox is reading 96.5. Needless to say I am not out picking rocks this evening!. I racked some wine earlier and that will be it today. It was the warmest I have ever seen it in there at 82 degrees. I had to remove some wine from a dozen carboys before I had an IBGLOWIN Moment! I'm going to need to move the lower catch wires up to home position soon. Some shoots are up past the second set of catch wires!

 

[ibglowin]

I think your finally seeing the heat wave we had on Sunday and the root cause behind......."the incident"

We are back down to normal temps for this time of year (mid 70's)

 

[Wade E]

We got slammed last night with thunder storms with trees down and power outages, nothing tragic at my house but we had 1 heck of a light show last night, I was very tired but cant help to watch stuff like that. Im so glad I dont live near all those tornadoes cause im to enthralled to stay away from that stuff!

 

[OilnH2O]

Man, I'm feeling jealous! We've had a cold, wet spring and while it seemed we were about the same a few weeks ago, the leaves are not doing well and some plants are still in bud. I'm sure I've lost several vines -- but am waiting to see -- we had a early cold snap last October and I think it got some of the pinots and edelweiss -- all 2 and 3-year old vines, too.

 

[grapeman]

It cooled down here- to just the perfectly enjoyable range of almost 80 degrees with crisp bright blue skies. Slight possibility of a quick shower tonight. This has been the driest May in my memory- at least it doesn't take a lot of spraying for protection.

 

[xanxer82]

Been cooler than yesterday( in the 90s) stormy and humid.
Can't wait to see more photos

 

[AlFulchino]

thank goodness, because i was w/o old Johnny Deere for a week

 

[grapeman]

I continued to work on the trellising over the weekend. It is going in behind the house where I planted a training trial vineyard. I worked on getting the wires up for some of the rows. There are four kinds of trellising.
1)Top Wire Cordon
2)Modified Geneva Double Curtain (I call it Schuyler for our town name) of my own design
3)Vertical Shoot Positioning
4)Scott Henry


The Scott Henry and VSP really use up the wire and take longer to run. There are 7 runs of wire per row with themcompared to 2 for TWC and 5 (although it could be 4) for the Schuyler.


While working, I noted yesterday the beginning of bloom here- about a month ahead of lasdt year. The Mn 1200 are blooming like crazy and only 2 years old. I will have my work cut out for me getting rid of them this year. The Marquette- sister to 1200 is almost ready to bloom and the Frontenac are only a few days behind.


This is an exciting and busy time of year.

 

[Waldo]

Got any pictures, info on the vertical shoot positioning

 

[grapeman]

Vertical shoot positioning uses a single or double trunk. You train it upwards to the first wire set around 30-36 inches off the ground. This becomes the fruiting wire. You lay down a cane on both sides of the trunk at or slighly below the wire. Those develop laterals which hopefully go upwards and those become future spurs- trying to get 3-5 inches between them. The next year you prune to 2-3 buds on each spur. Those buds develop into shoots. Each shoot will get 2 or 3 clusters and may require thinning the number of clusters down. The shoots are trained upwards between sets of wires about a foot apart. They get trimmed off if they grow much past the top wire. Many of the pictures I post are of VSP.

VSP at beginning of season

It will be a while, but I will be trying to cover the trellis types listed here as part of coverage of the training trial.

 

[Wade E]

So how many varietals are you experimenting with using different methods? I know you have figured out some of which work the best for you over there.

 

[ibglowin]

Is that a pic of your vines?

Very nice indeed!

 

[grapeman]

Wade I have four varieties in that trial with the four types of trellis-each. More would be nice, but I have limited funds to work with. My project is larger than almost all similar trials in the country at university level, without the university funding!


Yes Mike that is a small part of the vines. More to follow. That picture was taken about a week ago and the vines have doubled in size in that week.

 

[AlFulchino]

looking good Rich...we started a small test vineyard at my house today...just five 100 foot rows to check out some possible replacement varieties if the need should arise or maybe to add to production....we have a sickness...i call it a passion

 

[Waldo]

Vertical shoot positioning uses a single or double trunk. You train it upwards to the first wire set around 30-36 inches off the ground. This becomes the fruiting wire. You lay down a cane on both sides of the trunk at or slighly below the wire. Those develop laterals which hopefully go upwards and those become future spurs- trying to get 3-5 inches between them. The next year you prune to 2-3 buds on each spur. Those buds develop into shoots. Each shoot will get 2 or 3 clusters and may require thinning the number of clusters down. The shoots are trained upwards between sets of wires about a foot apart. They get trimmed off if they grow much past the top wire. Many of the pictures I post are of VSP.

VSP at beginning of season

It will be a while, but I will be trying to cover the trellis types listed here as part of coverage of the training trial.

THANKS !!!

 

[grapeman]

Boy are things pushing rapidly. We got a whole one third of an inch of rain today. Since we were so close to bloom, I hooked up the sprayer this evening to put on a pre-bloom fungicide. It had cleared out fairly good and we are going into a day of clouds and a touch of rain, then a day of sun and so on. Anyways, as I began spraying- being right up close and personal to the vines, I began to notice that bloom has actually begun on most varieties. This is a full three to four weeks ahead of last year!


Now all I need to do is get the weeds under control, finish the trellising up, train about a thousand young vines, train the mature vines to their trellis and on and on and on........


No rest for me!

 

[AlFulchino]

do you ever hold back on your sprays during any part of bloom for fear of interfering w pollination?

 

[Wade E]

Awesome, so if things stay on this track does that mean an earlier picking or do you try for higher Brix?

 

[Runningwolf]

Wow sounds busier then a dairy farmer

 

[grapeman]

do you ever hold back on your sprays during any part of bloom for fear of interfering w pollination?

That is why I mentioned I put on a fungicide. The fungicide alone does not interfere with pollination- however an insecticide would kill bees that might come in for a bit of pollen or nectar. I still don't like to apply any spray while bees are active, so I wait until evenings to apply.