Those Darn Deer!

Hopefully mowed the Park vineyard for the last time this
year ... but who knows.... its been a warm wet September
in Sampson. I gave the two rows that will have the
LaCrescent vines about 5 lbs of muriate of potash. The
round up did a pretty good job. I also could tell that
the spot spraying among the older vines also did good.

The vines did have a few more areas succumbing to pm, but
overall things looked pretty good. Some of the Lacrosse
had some pretty big sprouts coming from near the base....
I probably will cut most of those off this winter anyway.

Things did not look as good in the pit vineyard. Last
time I was up the deer had fed pretty heavily on the
vines, but that was nothing compared to what I found on
Saturday. They had eaten about 80% of the vines....
anything above the ground was eaten .... even some of the
big canes were heavily gnawed on.

Not sure why they have become more active as of late, but
I suspect that the deterioration of the black plastic,
allowed the deer to become braver and enter the vine area.
I think the black plastic scared them when it was intact.

Not sure exactly when the deer ate the vines, but James
said he noticed it Tuesday of that week. The leafless
vines were sprouting new leaves already ... which is
probably a bad thing, since that energy should be getting
stored for the winter not going into new growth.


Since I didn't know when the frosts will hit, I removed
the two root stock shoots while I could still distinguish
them .... wow these were big ... almost 2 inch diameter.
Didn't know if I should leave it on since it was one of
the few things that the deer didn't eat, but I didn't
think I would be able to tell which ones were rootstock
with no leaves.