Winter 22 to harvest 23

[Obbnw]

This year I'm going to focus more on pruning, limiting yield, and aesthetics.

For me the vineyard year starts in November. We had a warm October and most of my vines never really went through fall. The leaves just froze on the vine.

November through February I try to mound the snow over the base of the grapes to save some of the grapes if we get a really cold snap. Theoretically we could get -10 to -15 temps although in my 25 years here the min at my house has been about -3, the record min for the city is -22F. So far (6 years) I haven't seen much winter damage, and then it seems like the first freeze does the most damage.

WSU has some interesting info on cold hardiness. Grapevine Cold Hardiness | WSU Viticulture and Enology | Washington State University I check it in October and spring to see potential damage. I'm not in Washington but the general climate here isn't too much different.

 

[Obbnw]

Did some winter pruning on 3 vines. I had a bad attitude about the work I was doing, then sun came out, and the vines were calling to me. It was pretty relaxing. I typically prune each vine twice in the winter, first prune is getting rid of most of the mess and doesn't take a lot of thought. I noticed a little more winter injury than previous years. The snow in the above picture has mostly melted but we are expecting another 8" this weekend. It has been a wetter than normal December.

 

[GSMChris]

That is one heck of a winter picture to this Coastal California kid….

I will say - I’ve experienced that attitude adjustment many times in the last year - something about being outside in a vineyard just wipes my negativity away.

 

[Obbnw]

This last storm has been quite warm, rain for the last 2 days, not a common thing here. Most of the snow has melted and washed away.

Trimmed a bunch more today. Still have about 8 vines left. The final prune in March is going to be hard. I really have a fear of over pruning.

It's nice to get rid of the "noise".

 

[Obbnw]

Beautiful day today, 55, sunny, perfect day to work on the vines. Finished pruning the tempranillos and extended the trellis up a couple of feet. Did a half ass extension last summer that failed, did it right this time.

Tomorrow I hope to finish pruning the malbecs.

 

[Obbnw]

Finished almost all the trimming over the last few weeks. Still have a couple of Baco Noir left to do. We got 10" of snow today, and in general it has been a very wet winter but not too cold. I can't decide if all the water will be good or bad for the vines. Buds are starting to swell. 1st bud break has varied from 4-9 to 4-24, but I haven't even noticed any weeping yet. Ground seems pretty warm and the crocuses bloomed a few weeks back.

Snow and High trellis photo. The neighbor said he likes the vines, says he gets a nice green "hallway" all summer so at least I don't have to worry about annoying the neighbor. Win -win. Plus I still meet the building code limits which allows up to a 12' high trellis, I'm at about 11'.

 

[Obbnw]

My poor vines went from 18" of snow last week (got 8 more inches after I took the photo above) to 80 degrees yesterday and today.

Some did wake up and are starting to weep. It is supposed to cool down a little tomorrow which will make me feel better. It doesn't seem like a good thing for the vines to be in such hot weather if they are not moving any water.

 

[wood1954]

Same here , too hot then 3 inches of snow yesterday

 

[Obbnw]

So far everything looks good. Was a little worried with the later bud break but flowering seems pretty normal, if late, it is only a week. (I need to keep better records….)

4/15 first weeping
4/28 Baco Noir bud break
5/1 Tempranillo, malbec and tannat budbreak
5/15 sprayed for mildew (milstop and cease, it is supposed to be organic but doesn’t seem like it )
5/25 Baco Noir flowering
5/1 through 5/30, aggressive thinning. Since I don’t really have a pruning scheme I get tons of shoots. One thing I did learn this year is how the fruiting on one year old wood really works. The fruiting on one year old wood always confused me because I was getting fruiting shoots off of what I considered 2 year or older wood. I found a reference which said “off of or near the base of one year old wood”. I had never seen the near the base of exception before and that exception explains my fruiting off of old wood. The fruiting shoots are near the base of shoots I had cut off. The Malbecs have tons of fruiting shoots that are near the base, the tempranillos don’t do it as much. Didn’t check the Bacos or Tannats.
6/6 through today malbecs and tempranillos blooming.
6/12 Tannats just started blooming.

Some pictures

Baco taking over the Japanese honeysuckle. I want to trim it but in the middle of the honeysuckle is a bird nest, that now has 4 babies in it. Hopefully they will move out soon.



Tannat getting ready to bloom.



Tannat and tempranillo climbing as high as they can.



Tempranillo blooming



Baco with fruit



Malbec blooming



This year the vines have been a little yellow but this one malbec is very yellow. Wet winter, clay high ph soil. The green leaves are from the adjacent vine. Not sure why this one is worse. It is in the middle of relatively green vines.
.




Usually I only spray once, but I think I'm going to spray again this week.

 

[Obbnw]

Sprayed cease and milstop yesterday. Didn't see any mildew but the neighbors roses are covered with it.

I wonder about the shelf life of the cease and milstop (official number is 3 years). I just don't use very much, it is now 4 years old and I have a lot left plus it is relatively expensive.

Thinned out the malbecs again. They are so vigorous. The tempranillos are nice and open.

I have high hopes again. Last year's tempranillo wine is coming along. Color is a little light, and it seems a little thin, but drinkable. I'm putting more effort this year in getting more sun to the clusters.

Everything is really growing fast. The unseasonably cool weather hasn't slowed them down much. The growing degree days so far is about 5/8ths of last year.

Back to work...

 

[Snafflebit]

Looking good. Are you spur pruning or something like it? I saw your comment on one year old wood

 

[Obbnw]

There is no method only madness ; )

Basically it's a I want this vine to go "there" pruning, more like training vines for a pergola. "There" is over the garage door or over the driveway or to the top of the fence or....

Once I get the vines where I want it is more like spur pruning.

The comment about "near the base" is that shoots were completely removed, but I got new fruiting shoots from near the base of where the removed shoot was. Sometimes it is hard to tell a shoot was there and I thought I was getting fruit off of a shoot off of 2 to 5 year old wood.

This year as I remove some unwanted shoots I'm leaving one leaf so I know it what was there when I do next winters pruning.

 

[Obbnw]

Had my computer glasses on today when I did my daily inspection and noticed some powdery mildew and herbicide damage. Normally I don't wear my glasses in the garden, but maybe I should since I didn't see the powdery mildew or herbicide damage yesterday.

When I first started growing grapes I didn't spray at all. The first year there was no mildew, second year there were minor patched but didn't get on the grapes, the 3rd year there was a little mildew and it didn't seem bad, never really covered the leaves but it did get in the grapes and pretty much ruined half the harvest. After that I have been spraying once at the beginning of the season and that has controlled the mildew. I can't decide if the mildew showed up this year purely due to weather or if my spray reached it shelf life and is no longer effective. It has definitely been prime weather for it this year.

The herbicide damage is annoying and damage shows up almost every year. It is usually pretty localized damage. I think it comes from across the street. The prevailing wind goes across a large expanse of grass and goes right up my driveway and the vines catch whatever is drifting in the breeze.

So it goes. Overall everything looks pretty good so I can't complain.

 

[Obbnw]

The herbicide damage was more extensive this year than past years and I'm at stalemate in my powdery mildew battle.

I did lose some grape bunches to powdery mildew. This one was one of the worst I found.

The powdery mildew is almost imperceptible on the leaves but is obvious on the grapes.

I use 2 components in my spay, "cease" which is "a biofungicide. Its patented bacterium Bacillus subtilis
strain QST 713 and natural antifungal and antibacterial compounds use multiple modes of action to destroy pathogens" and milstop which is just potassium bicarbonate. I doubt the potassium bicarbonate would go bad but the cease might. When I did my second spray I also sprayed some roses with powdery mildew. It looks like the spray totally eliminated the mildew on the roses so I'm questioning whether the cease went bad.

I do think I didn't spray enough volume/coverage in my initial sprays. When I first started spraying I mixed 3 gallons a would have a gallon left, so from the 3rd year on I started mixing only 2 gallons. But now the vines probably have 3 times the area they did 3 years ago so I don't think I got good coverage. Sprayed today and tried to make sure I got everything covered and ended up using 4 gallons.

I was pretty dejected about the powdery mildew but when I sprayed all the vines today I realized the damage is pretty localized and not as bad as I initially thought.

I do struggle with removing clusters. Psychologically, I want every cluster to stay on, and feel like I'm wasting good grapes when I remove them. At least the powdery mildew makes it so I don't feel too guilty when I remove them.

Last years wines seem to be OK but color is light and they don't quite have the depth of previous years. I attribute it to lack of sun on the clusters and excessive crop load. This year I have been trying to do more leaf pulling and limiting production.

Got a little carried away with the leaf pulling and burnt some clusters. At 4600' and clear skies, the sun can be brutal. Plus it's pretty hot and dry here...



Hopefully the powdery mildew and I can maintain our stalemate.

Will keep leaf pulling and thinning despite the burn risk. While spraying I did realize many clusters are still fully shaded.

 

[Neb Farmer]

It is interesting to hear that your early experiences in wine grape growing was quite similar to mine. I didn't spray for powdery mildew at all the first few years, and the fourth year I lost the majority of my crop to it. The berries only grew to the size of peas and then were basically mummified.
I then sought the advice of someone who grew vinifera professionally, and he turned me on to spraying sulphur every two weeks and also using Armicarb to actually kill the powdery mildew, and a few other things. My powdery mildew issues have been minimal ever since, if any at all.

Your area may be a bit different than where I am, but eventually you will get a routine down as to what works best for you. If there are any winery/vineyards in your area maybe you can 'talk shop' with them and see what they are doing to mitigate disease and insect problems.

Good luck with it all...and have fun!

 

[Snafflebit]

Powdery mildew builds in the vineyard. It is better to manage it before it becomes a problem. I try to sulfur spray the trellis posts and anything wooden near the grapes as well as the vines.

 

[Obbnw]

I'm slowly losing the powdery mildew battle. The spray seems to be working but my spray technique needs some work...

I just use a hand pump with a 3 gallon tank. With the grapes being so tall I'm not getting good coverage on the top. The new infections are higher in the canopy and where you would least expect based on airflow and canopy density.

The Malbecs and Tannats seem to be more resistant than the Tempranillo. The BacoNoir seem immune to infection.

Looks like I've lost about 75% of the Tempranillo grapes and what's left is questionable. I was planning on picking some grapes earlier this year and doing a lower alcohol wine. I may pick the tempranillo early and do a rose with minimal skin time to minimize potential negatives from scarred/infected fruit.

Impact on the other grapes is small, less than 5% so far.

Baco noir started veraison last week. Hopefully the others will start to change soon. I think I read that once the grapes get to a certain age they are unlikely to be damaged by PM.

I'm trying to stay positive. The infected grapes just make the uninfected grapes look better. : ) But I'm scared spend time trimming etc because I don't want to find more damage....

 

[Obbnw]

The mildew is still around but seems to have stopped infecting the actual grapes.

My newest conspiracy theory is the herbicide drift caused the powdery mildew. Well OK not caused but I do wonder if it contributed. It showed up first on the first vine that showed herbicide drift damage. Then just when I thought the Baco Noir were immune to powdery mildew it showed up on the Baco Noir vines. Interesting it showed up about a week after I noticed herbicide drift damage on the Baco Noir. hmmmmm.

Baco Noir are moving along fast, should pick in the next week or so, brix is in the 21 range.


Tempranillo is a total powdery mildew disaster. I have "the empty"



In a normal year you can barely see the fence, but I pruned off a bunch of mildew damage and most clusters.
I also have "the ugly":



But a few seem unscathed:




The malbecs fought off the PM a little better. I won't really know till I pick and destem, but it seems like I should get a decent harvest. Malbecs plugging away:


The Tannats are bringing up the rear. They will likely not be ready until October, but if trends continue we should have a relatively warm September and October.



Next year I'll do better ; )

 

[Obbnw]

Spent yesterday with the vines.

The baco's blew right to 25-26 brix. At first I figured my refractometer needed calibration, but it checked out fine.

Picked all the baco's, about 45 lbs of tiny berries. The pm damaged tempranillos were also reading 22-23 brix so I picked them too. Got about 25 lbs where last year I had about 200. Destemmed and crushed by hand. Hand pressed the Tempranillo, ended up with about 1.5 gallons of juice.

Crushed the baco's, about 3.8 gallons of juice.

Decided to mix them together and start a ferment.

Final sg about 1.105, ph measued 3.3, but I didn't have any solution to check the calibration so I don't have a lot of faith in the reading.

This morning the bucket is bubbling away.

I need to do some shopping. My wine drawer was empty, no ph check solution, no campden tablets, no corks...

 

[GSMChris]

Oh how I empathize with the empty supply drawer… making a list for shopping tomorrow as I’m expecting to be making primitivo later this week as part of a group effort. Tempranillo will follow next week. My vineyard grapes are a couple weeks out unless the temperatures rise. We’ve been 75-80 during the day, 50-55 at night. Pretty good weather so I hope it holds.