Rose Chafers Attack

This weekend I came to the vineyard to find new problems. The biggest of which was the
attack of the Rose Chafers at the Park vineyard. There were none the previous Sunday
(June 12), but by Saturday June 18, they had completely consumed and apparently killed
about 4 of the seedless concord near the east and of the row. They were also severly
eating several of the LaCrosse and a few of the St Pepin. I saw some on other plants, but
it was the firs four rows on the east end that were attacked most visiously.

I directly sprayed several of the infested plants with Sevin. but I didn't go overboard
spraying since some of the gapes still had flowers, and I didn't want to harm the honey bees.

Fred Dombrowski had cut hay in the adjoining field on Wednesday, and I don't know if this
contributed to the infestation.

The pit vineyard was reletively unscathed.

I had my nephew Brent as my helper this week.

Several weeds had reappeared since last week, but it wasn't terrible. It was Brents duty
to pull weeds, although he spent a lot of time fighting off horse flies, Rose Chafers and
Bumble bees.

Brent also helped me get some of the trellis wire up. ... I was able to get about five or
6 lengths of wire up. I still have about 10 lengths to go. But I'm getting there.

I was able to get the irrigation for the pit vineyard going. I water it for about 3.5
hours on Sunday ... each of the 75 vines had a 1 gal/hour dripper next to it.

The pit vines looked fairly healthy. The Cabernet Sauvignon, that had only been planted 3
weeks earlier, were just begining to leaf out. Most of the other vines had a healthy
about of leaves coming from them.

I think I saw only 3 or 4 vines from the Cab Franc, Merlot, and Chardonnay that did not
have leaves.

Weeding and canopy management/ vine training

I spent the last weekend up at the vineyard again. Most of the chardonnay has finally
broken bud. I think 2 or 3 still had not. Maybe a total of a half dozen vines have not
broken bud from the original 60 that were planted.

The cabernet Sauvignon planted two weeks later have not broken bud yet, but I do see some
signs of them pushing through.

I have not finished setting up the irrigation yet, but we have had rain every couple of
days at the vineyard, so things seemed adequately moist.

It looks like a deer may have run through the vineyard at the pit, since one of the wires
around it was pulled through the middle. I didn't see any damage though.


I had Kellan and Michael there to weed. They got about 4 full rows done. Another 4 need
to be done.

I mowed, but I set the mower high. The grass hadn't grown too much in the 2 weeks I was
gone. I plan on mowing it shorter next time.

I also spent a lot of time pruning off shoots from the bases, and tying vines to the
plastic coated metal stakes that I am using. I put the vine cuttings in between the rows
on the grass to be mulched in. I severely cut back several vines, and tried to select the
strongest cane to become the trunk. I also snipped a lot of the grapes I saw growing,
hoping to divert some of the energy into new growth.


I hope to get some trellising done next weekend, since some of my winter die off, may have been due to vine injury from poor trellis support during the growing season.