Too Warm?

Weather Underground Forecast for March 18- March 21 (observation from Sat. night 11:40 pm)

This is crazy weather.  The forecast high for tomorrow (Sunday, March 18) is 81 F.   If I wasn't a grape farmer, this would be awesome, but this could be really devastating for grapes.   If we have bud break in the next few weeks, the chance of a hard frost between bud break and mid-May is quite likely.   This could mean a severe hit to yields this year.   On the other hand, if we do have an early bud break, and no frost, we may have one of the best grape years in memory.  Unfortunately the former is more likely than the latter.

I spent a few hours pruning Prairie star today.   I saw some bud swell compared to last weekend.   Pruning cuts from last weekend were actively dripping.   The vines look great, but the a few frosty nights would be great to slow things down.  

If I didn't have such limited opportunities to prune, I would delay pruning as long as possible.   Delayed pruning is beneficial for delaying bud break since buds towards the ends of canes break first.    Based on the extended forecast, I may not have all of my vines pruned before bud break.  Hopefully slightly cooler temperatures forecast for next weekend will slow things down just enough.

Pruning has begun

Before

After

We began pruning the vines on Saturday, March 10.   Above are some marquette vines.   We are doing most of the vineyard as VSP (vertical shoot position).   We leave about 25-30 buds per vine.  

The vines look good.   I've seen very little winter damage as expected.   The next couple of weeks are going to be crazy warm for March.   I wouldn't be surprised if bud swell or bud break could occur a month early.   Not something I hope for.   We are bound to get a frost between now and May, and a bud break in April will surely mean bud/shoot damage.

We will see what happens.

We are now zone 5a!

The USDA just released their new plant hardiness zone map. We went from 4b to 5a. Wow.

3 month time lapse of the vineyard

We got out first major snow of the season at the vineyard today.   I thought this would be a great opportunity to put up a time lapse from the last 3 months of vineyard block two.   The animation starts around August 15, and ends today.   I put in several frames from today to get the full impact of the snow.

It's a little hard to tell from the animation, but the first hard frost occurs around Oct 27.

In a few weeks I will post a season summary for Sampson Valley Vineyard.

Grape Picking Today!

We are picking grapes today.

We survived a 3 week late bud break, a late frost, a very rainy June, record heat, black rot, and an early frost.

If good wine needs the grapes to suffer, this should be a good year.

On to the picking!

Some progress on ripening

Lacrescent and Frontenac sees big increase in the last week. Others have more modest increases. We will be picking all varieties on Sept 24.
Foch:  18.8
St. Pepin:  14.3
Lacrosse:  13.2
LaCrescent vb1:  19.5
Frontenac:  23.2
LaCrescent vb3:  22.4
Prairie Star:  19.3

Latest Brix readings

Readings for grapes sampled at 7:00 pm on 9/5/2011

Prairie Star - 18.3
La crescent vineyard block 3   -  20.6
La Crescent vineyard block 1  -  17.6
Frontenac - 20.9
Foch - 17.8
St Pepin - 13.4
Lacrosse - 11.5