Spring Prunning .... at last!!!

Vineyard on April 4, 2008

Wow ... what a winter! Things are finally warming up, and I was able to get my pruning done before my vines broke dormancy. Here is a quick synopsis of the winter at Sampson Valley Vineyard.

Vineyard on February 15, 2008

From about December 1, 2007 - March 30, 2008 we had substantial snow cover with the exception of about 1 mild week in January. During much of that time, the snow was a foot deep or more. The frost depth was quite low, so that when the snow cover finally melted in the last week and a half, the ground frost was also gone.

The coldest temperature recorded in the vineyard this winter -16F. Last year(2006-2007) it was -15F, and the year before (2005-2006) it was -17F. This year we had much more time spent below zero, and more often. We did not have many warm periods, with the exception of about a week or two in January, and we never got the long warm spells like we did in the last two winters.

High Tunnel update

Tunnel on March 1, 2008

Despite several long periods of below Zero Fahrenheit temperatures, the coldest the center of the high tunnel got was +12F. And near the edges (about a 1 meter in), we got to about +7F. During sunny Days in January and February, the temperature reached the 40s and 50s.

Early March with snow collected on the sides and roof of the high tunnel

As soon as March rolled around the lows were similar to earlier in the winter, but the high temperatures started sky rocketing. On sunny days, the temperature reached over 100F!!!

At this point I decided the end flaps needed to stay open. This kept the high temperatures even on very sunny days, closer to the 70s and 80s. Still warmer than I'd like, but better than 100F! I'll need to install some automatically opening vents for next winter.

An Open flap on the high tunnel to control high temperatures

I did most of the pruning in the high tunnel on Easter weekend (March 21-23).

Pruning

My routine (non high tunnel) pruning this year was completed in 3 days ... April 2- April 4. Normally I would have had this done by the end of March, but the substantial snow cover set me back a couple of weeks.A LaCrosse vine pruned to a VSP trellis system.

In general things looked pretty good. I did not see any rabbit or other rodent damage. I had expected to see some, since I had a lot of rabbit damage in my backyard. Even along the paths to the vineyard, the boxelders and sumacs had much of there bark chewed off from about a foot off the ground to 2 feet up. However, the vineyard was pretty much untouched.

There was very little winter damage in the LaCrosse and StPepin. The Landot Noir showed a significant amount of winter damage, but no more than other years .... I really need to pulls those out, and replace them with Foch. The Foch vines that did not produce last year, looked pretty good. There was some damage to the heavily/over cropped Foch from last year. It remains to be seen how much. I did prune those pretty severely, but possibly not severe enough.

I should be able to get a small crop from the LaCrescent this year. They did not have a great year last year due to the drought. But hopefully, they can make up for lost time this year.

A 3rd year prunned LaCrescent vine.

I still don't know how many of the new plantings from last year made it. I planted 100 each of Prairie Star, LaCrescent and Frontenac. Already in the fall I know I had lost several to the drought, so it will be interesting to see how many survived the winter.

Next week I hope to start preparing for my 200 Marquette vines that I will be planting. I have been hearing very good things about Marquette. I have had the oportunity to taste a Marquette wine from New York this past winter. It did not blow me away. None the less, with such good word of mouth from others who have tried some of the Minnesota produces Marqutte wines, I thought it was definitely something to plant. These will be the last vines I plan on planting for a while (except to replace dead or unproductive vines). This will bring my vine total up to almost 900 vines or about 1.5 acres.

My todo list for the next month ...
- dormant spray lime sulfur to control anthracnose.
- till and prepare for marquette
- more trellising
- setting up drip irrigation for high tunnel
- look at putting in a well and irrigating the outside vines.