Once again I am putting my goals down in writing. It will be a challenge to accomplish these. Last year I had several misses on my goals. I'm sure getting married, moving out of my house, selling my house, and preparing for a baby all contributed.
This year has a lot of distractions too. Our first baby is due in February, and we are in the process of looking for a house. But how much work can a new baby be? :)
Here are my Goals for 2009.
-Pull out Landot Noir. I only had 24 vines, but they could not hack the weather here. They should have been hardy enough, but they just kept dieing back. I think I'm yanking those.
-Replace Landot noir with St Pepin. The St Pepin have shown to be disease resistant, and very hardy. The demand for st pepin seems to be good. They seem good candidates to replace the landot. The draw back is that they are pistilate, and need other grape vines for polination. They will be right by the lacrosse, so hopefully that will not be an issue.
-Pull some of the foch from the low areas. One spot in vineyard one (aka the park vineyard) has had frost issues. St pepin has been reliably the last to vines to break bud in my vineyard, so I plan to replace about 50 vines with st pepin, and maybe a few Front gris.
-Put in the IRRIGATION. This will happen this year. Two drought years in a row has convinced me. Even if I don't see a drought again for several years. I will be able to use the water for frost prevention.
-Continue using the rose chafer trapping, and suppliment with Surround (kaolin clay). The rose chafer traps were effective last year. But the rose chafers continue to be a problem. I plan to use the traps again this year, but I will also use surround wich is organic.
-Aquire a pull behind Sprayer. Ideally I would get an air blast sprayer, but the size of the vineyard would not justify the expense.
-Begin a foliar feeding program. I read that it is debatable how effective this is, but I will experiment with it this year.
Yield Goals
I'm going to be very conservative here, since many of the vines are recovering from the previous year droughts.
- -Experimental vinifera .... 250lbs.
- park vineyard st pepin, lacrosse, lacrescent. 500 lbs
-total yields about 800 lbs. I think 2010 will be the year my yields return to more reasonable numbers i.e. 2000lbs+
1 comment:
Congratulations on soon becoming a father! How much work can a new baby be? I remember when my husband and I brought home our first child. One is lulled into a false sense of capability in the hospital. Nurses buzz around offering advice and helping out. Once the three of us arrived home my husband and I looked at each other and asked, "What do we do now?" All three of us took a nap.
It's good to see you posting again. Our house burned down just before Christmas so I lost all my vineyard notes as well as research material for my novel. We are hoping to rebuild in the summer but I'm prety out of sorts right now. It was nice to click onto your websie and see some pics and read some 'grape talk'.
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