Surviving a frost .... barely

Ice On The Vines!!!

It was a tense weekend. Due to the drought, and overcroping my foch, I need to let the foch grapes hang longer to ripen. As of Thursday, they were still under 18 brix. The forecast for Friday night had us on the edge of a frost warning, so I decided to spend the night in the Vineyard.

I got to the vineyard at about 9:30 pm. I checked my max min thermometer, which is in the upper part of the vineyard. It already read 38 F!!!! I had to hustle. The skies had quickly cleared, and I knew it would only be a matter of a couple of hours before I reached freezing.

My pump for my sprayer had broken a couple of weeks ago, and I brought up a replacement. I got the sprayer working by about 10:30 pm. I filled my sprayer tank with filtered warm pond water. I also added some potassium bicarbonate to the tank ... an organic mixture to kill powdery mildew. It also has some frost protection ability.

ATV with Sprayer.

I made the first run without incident. I put another thermometer in the bottom corner of the vineyard where the cold air pools. by the time I finished my first spraying, the temperature in the bottom corner was about 33F. I went back to the pond to refill.

I brought a sleeping bag and gear to take naps between vineyard runs. I decided to abandon any sleeping plans when I found that the temperature was dropping so fast.

I made about 8 to 10 total runs between the pond and the vineyard. The temperture at the top of the hill in the vineyard made it down to about 30F. The lowest temperature I saw in the bottom corner was 25.3F ....

By sunrise most of the vines had a thin coat of ice (see the picture at the top) The thickest ice was in the bottom corner.

In the end all of the foch with fruit survived the frost with minimal leaf damage.

Foch with grapes made it.

The foch in the bottom corner did get quite a bit of frost/freeze kill, but some of the upper leaves made it through. None of these vines had any fruit, and their survival through the frost was less critical.

Frost damaged foch vine.

The projected harvest of Foch, is now Tuesday, September 25. The folks at Captain's Walk Winery are planning to make a blush style wine from it .... that is if it survives until I can pick it :) The yellow jackets have discovered the grapes, and have begun to damage some fruit. Hopefully the lady bugs don't find them too.