Springtime Pruning

It's beginning to feel like spring may have finally arrived. I took off all of last week to do vineyard work. Number one on my agenda was pruning.

It took me about 2 days (March 27-28) to prune the park vineyard. Overall things looked better than I expected. I saw little winter kill on the Foch, LaCrosse and St Pepin. Some of the ends that did not harden off were brown, but for the most part things looked good. I've been fooled before, thinking that things were alive when pruning, and then finding that they didn't make it. But I'm more optimistic this year. I did see more winter damage in the Landot noir, but that is the least hardy of my vines and is somewhat expected.

Here is a pruned foch vine: ... still kind of a baby, but should have a small crop this year!


I was also finally able to check out the experimental vinifera vineyard. The tarps on one end were pulled up slightly, but overall things looked pretty good at this point.
I did see a couple of holes chewed into the tarp which concerned me. I hoped at this point not to find too many rodents living under the tarps.



On Wednesday, March 29. I, my brother Jon, and my nephew cleared the "scrub" boxelders on the hillside overlooking my vineyard. Getting rid of these not only improve the looks around the vineyard, but also allows better air flow around the vineyard, and hopefully will make the deer feel less secure chewing on the vines.