Mistakes Part 3

I bet you thought I'd run out of vineyard mistakes I made. Nope ... lots more to come.

Let's see where was I ....

Mistake #9
Not using grow tubes appropriately.
I've read several methods for using grow tubes. Some people swear by them others say they are a waste of time. I've seen research that shows that vines that have them grow faster, but things are about the same between vines with out tubes after about 3 years. Some growers remove them mid summer others keep them on all winter long. My experience has been it depends. When I kept them on some of the foch through out the summer and into the fall, most of those needed retraining. But some of the vines with out grow tubes had rodent damage. Frontenac vines that had them on over the winter suffered no ill effects. So here is the policy that I decided to follow. Any vines rated to be just barely hardy enough for your location, remove the tubes by mid to late July. If a vine is very hardy for your location, leave the tube on until it is trained to complete cordons. The main advantage I have found with grow tubes, is that it makes early training easier, herbicide application easier, offers protection from rodents over the winter. So would I use tubes again, but I would also be careful about using them on less hardy vines. I reserve the right to refine my position on this.

Mistake #10
Improper Stone size for mulch
I decided early on to use stone for vine much to control weeds. The first year I used weed fabric, and stones that were already in the gravel pit next to the vineyard. That was very inadequate. The next year I had washed gravel. This worked much better, and was a lot of work to put on the vines. But the gravel was too small in size, and weed seeds were still able to germinate in it. I have not put stone under the newest vines, since I have not had time to spread it. I do think the gravel was useful. Weeds under the stone mulched vines is much less than the unmultched vines. So I would use stone again, but I would use a much larger stone, at least an inch in diameter.

Mistake #11
Using high Cordon instead of VSP.
Most of my first vines I trained to a single high cordon. I have not noticed a signicant difference in the amount of work training VSP versus single high cordon. But I do see that VSP is easier to prune, easier to harvest from, and although I can't personally verify this, VSP produces lower acid grapes. My site is note overly vigorous, so VSP may work better for me than other sites. All of my grape planted the last two years are being trained VSP.

Mistake #12
Poor choice of Earth anchor for end posts.
There is a tool that can be attached to a tractor PTO to drive in the long helix earth anchors. If I had a tractor with a PTO shaft, I would have used those, but I do not. So I got the shorter helix anchors. Even the short anchors took me over a half hour each to put in. And many of those than pulled out. I finally found an anchor that can be used in stoney ground, and can be driven in with a hammer. It is called a fenox ground anchor. Much easier to put in than the helix anchors and non have pulled out so far. http://www.spectrellising.com/anchors/index.php

Upcoming mistakes subjects .....spraying mistakes, poor equipment choices, variety choices .... oh I have lots more ....