Lacrescent grapes being trained

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> Thought I'd post a picture of the lacrescent vines training status

Lacrescent grapes being trained

Thought I'd post a picture of the lacrescent vines training status

Test blog

Test blog from my phone

Things look pretty good

I spent the weekend working at the vineyard. Things are looking pretty good over all.

For the last two months, it seems like every major rainfall has missed the vineyard.
We've had about 2.5 inches total over the last 2 and one half months. The older vines are doing well, but the one year old vines and new plantings are struggling a bit. We have watered the new plantings 3 times since planting. Memorial day weekend, at the end of June, and about a week ago. We finally got an inch of rain last Wednesday, but that hardly made a dent in our water needs.

The dry weather has been great for disease control however. I see absolutely no signs of powdery or downy mildew. Since we had the rain Wednesday, and have a had some higher humidity days lately, I did hit the vines with the Organic fungicide Kaligreen on Sunday.

Here is a synopsis of vine/grape status.

Vineyard 1 (Park Vineyard)
-5th year Foch.
Large crop. Maybe 700 + lbs. No disease signs. No obvious stress due to drought. Need more severe prunning and tying next year. Probably about 2-3 weeks from verasion. (when the grapes turn from green to bluish black)

-4th year foch
No crop this year ... retraining due to late frost. Coming back strong.

-5th and 4th year Lacrosse









Nice first crop. About 400 - 500 lbs some retraining needed. Fairly healthy



-4th year St Pepin









Very nice first crop. No retraining needed. 300-400 lbs



-4th year Landot Noir
No crop ... can't handle even mild winters. Good growth, but have had good growth in the past, and it hasn't recovered. May pull them next year. ( the info I read, said they should survive the winters, but even the mild ones take them out?)

-3rd year Concord
Having some trouble training these guys. They need more rain. Afew clusters here and there.

-2nd year Lacrescent
Started out strong. A few got hit by the rose chafers pretty hard. They could also use a good shot of rain or two. Pulled the grow tubes off them a week or so ago, to give them time to harden off.


Vineyard 2 (high tunnel.)
-All types
Doing pretty well. Need major training, but will have to wait until next year. Little disease, and good growth. Deer have been in there, but damage is not too bad.

Vineyard 3 (new plantings)

All types really need some water. The Prairie Star seem to be doing the best, followed by the Frontenac. The LaCrescent are spotty some doing well, others are strugling.

Vineyard Status on the 4th of July

Up to do some basic maintenance. Things looks good, but definitely could use some rain especially for the new plantings. I will be in Greece for the the next couple of weekends, so I won't be back untill the end of July.

In the mean time the berries have swollen and are looking good.

5th year Foch



4th year Saint Pepin

Chafers still there, but things are improving

I still have a few chafers, but they are for the most part leaving the 1 st year and 2nd year vines alone.Overall things look good. We got about 1.3 inches of desperately needed rain this week. We got the vines in the lower right "frost" corner started retraining.

Here are some other pictures of the latest in the vineyard.

This is the 2nd year LaCrescent. I'm going to train them VSP (Vertical shoot position). This means they will have a lower cordon with the fruiting zone, and the canopy will be trained up into catch wires.


Lacrosse will have a small but decent harvest.


St. Pepin didn't pollinate very well.




Training of the St Pepin is going pretty well.



Foch looks pretty good.

Vine status

Things are looking pretty good. Karen came up on Sunday and helped me with the pruning and retraining of the foch in the "frost corner" of the vineyard. I also got up the bottom wire for the 2nd year LaCrescent ... I think I am going to train those using VSP training/trellis method.

We are getting very dry ... rain predicted for Monday ... my fingers are crossed. Disease pressure is very low. The vines look very healthy.

The high tunnel grapes are also looking very good. I plan on spending time training them next weekend.

Karen and I sprayed some of the retrained foch and all of the new plantings and 2nd year Lacrescent vines with Sevin, since the Rose chafers were still thick on some young vines especially the retrained foch.

Rose chafer damage .... spraying

I got to the vineyard and found that a few of the 2nd year Lacrescent had major damage. But it most were minor damage. The new plantings got hit harder.

Since None of these vines are in bloom, and wind was very calm (and most of the other grapes were done or very close to being done blooming) I sprayed Sevin on the 48 second year LaCrescent and the 300 new plantings.

Here is my estimate of damage.
(my criteria)
4- Defoliated
3- Severe damage (some green left)
2- moderate damage (half the leaves show some damage)
1- Light damage ( ~ 1/4 leaves show damage)
0- No damage (no visible damage or so few, that it is barely noticable)

2nd year lacrescent (48 total)

#vines Damage
2 ----4
4 ----3
15----2
15 ------1
12 ------0

3rd year Concord (23 total)

Number of vines Damage
0 ----4
0 ----3
4 ----2
10----1
9 ----0


1st year Frontenac (100 ..25 only have shoots, 4 showed no life)
Number of vines Damage
6 ----4
10----3
20----2
40----1
24----0

1st year LaCrescent (99 total - 9 showed no life)
Number of vines Damage
8 ----4
10----3
10----2
25----1
37----0

1st year Prairie Star (100 .. 100% have leaves!)
Number of vines Damage
10 ----4
10----3
10----2
10----1
60----0

Rose chafers hit harder

Just received another Insect damage report ... the population has exploded. The vines are being hit pretty hard. I will probably take a day off in the middle of the week, to spray.

Rose Chafers Return

I received a report from my scout that the Rose Chafers have returned (Friday June 8) She said that there were only a few on the Lacrescent by the park. The hay had not been cut yet, so that does not seem to be the trigger which I had thought.

Pictures from June 3rd

LaCrescent from last year

LaCrosse just about to bloom

Foch in Bloom

Foch

Planting done ... really. And foch starting to bloom

I finished up planting my last 25 Frontenac vines yesterday. They were accidentally left out of the first shipment. Already most of the vines planted two weeks ago have green leaves. The Lacrescent look to being doing the best.


We also finally got some substantial rains. While I was at the vineyard we picked up 1.1 inches. The first significant rain in over a month!

The foch are just starting to bloom. I'm about 2 weeks ahead of last year. This is good, since hopefully the bloom will be done before the Rose Chafers arrive. They showed up about June 10, last year and June 15 the year before.

My foch in my back yard in Madison have been in bloom for about a week and a half, and bloom was mostly complete by Friday June 1. These of course benefit from being in the city with its warmer temperatures and watering.



I'll post some pictures as soon as I download them from my camera.

Spring 2007 planting nearly complete

We planted the Prairie Star, LaCrescent and Frontenac vines Saturday. About a half an acre total. Weather was nearly perfect! ... We finished just before the rain moved in.
I still have 25 more frontenac vines to plant (They were accidentally not shipped.)

With the completion of planting this year I now have 663 vines planted. Assuming 10-15 lbs per vine on average ... this would mean a good harvest would be about 3-5 tons each year.

Light Frost Saturday Night, May 12.

We had a light frost in the vineyard Saturday night. (31 F on the min max thermometer) Took out the primaries on much of the 4th year foch which are in the lower South East corner. Random nipped buds elsewhere. The older foch were relatively unscathed.

Summary of primary bud damage.
2nd year Lacrescent: 40%
4th year Lacrosse: 5%
5th Lacrosse: 1%
4th year Saint Pepin 5-10%
4th year landot Noir: (has not broken bud yet)
4th year foch: 95%
5th year foch: 5-10%

Bud Status

Foch

Foch ... (4th &5th year) Bud burst happened in the last few days ... some small shoots, several small shoots at the bases. Excellent bud survival... no sign of grape flea beetle.

Landot Noir

Landot Noir(4th year) .... Not seeing any bud swell, except for a few .... not sure if they are late to bud, or dead?

Saint PepinSaint Pepin

Saint Pepin (4th year) ... Not as far along as foch just begining bud burst, many very swollen buds complete burst expected in the next few days. Excellent bud survival ... should have a decent first crop this year (~200 lbs+).

LaCrosse

LaCrosse (4th and 5th year) .... About the same as foch as far as bud burst. Also had excellent winter survival. Looks like I'm finally recovering from the 2,4 D damage in 2004. I should also have a decent crop .. ~200 lbs plus.

LaCrescent

LaCrescent (2nd year) ... Good first year survival. Looks like I may have only lost one vine (maybe not) All were pruned back to a couple of buds, and bud burst happend over a week ago (but they are all near the ground) Put orange snap together grow tubes on them last week, and buried the tube bases this weekend.

Seedless Concord

Seedless Concord (3rd year) Bud swell ... about the same as Saint Pepin. Put old blue tubes on most of those this weekend... and trimmed most back to a couple of buds. Blue tubes are so I can use herbicide, since weed competition was an issue last year.

Other Notes ...
-Getting very dry, could use a good rain shower. Some rain predicted for the upcoming week.
-Warm temperatures are predicted this week.
-No sign of frost for the next couple of weeks ...

Bud break in madison and nearly Bud Break in Sampson

My backyard foch grape vines broke bud last week Wednesday-Friday April 25-27. The shoots are now about 1-2 inches long. Bud break in Sampson should occur any day now. The foch were quite swollen. A few buds near the base of the trunks had already broken.

I put grow tubes on the LaCrescent vines that I planted last year. They look very good. I may have lost 1 vine ... but it may have made it ... hard to tell at this point. Most of the buds have broken, and most have only couple shoots. I pruned them back quite a bit, to get a nice strong trunk.

The Saint Pepin look to be a few days at least behind the foch. The Landot noir aren't showing a whole lot of life. The Lacrosse seem to be on about the same pace as the foch ... the Lacrosse look healthier this year than any year in the past.

I saw no grape flea beetle signs this year, so I did not spray anything for them.

Things seem to be about 1-2 weeks behind where they were last year ... hopefully this will allow things to miss any frosts.

I mowed the vineyard for the first time this season ... things look good an healthy over all.

Buds are a starting to swell

The buds are just starting to swell. Our little cold spell was welcome earlier in the month; I think it slowed things down enough to avoid the inevitable frosts in late April and early May. I still think I may have bud burst earlier than last year. Looking at the current forecasts, I would expect bud burst to occur about or shortly after May 1.

I spent much of Monday (April 16) applying my dormant spray of Lime Sulfur. Conditions were excellent. Almost no wind, with temperatures in the upper 50's. The Lime Sulfur is an Organic spray used to control anthracnose and overwintering diseases. Vines are looking very healthy coming out of winter.

And then comes the snow!!!!

It's been a cold April. We got down to 20 F last weekend. Luckily, I haven't seen any bud swell yet, so I don't expect any damage from the cold temperatures. I'm certain I faired better than the folks down south (Missouri, Tennessee, Arkansas) ... they reached record lows in the mid 20's to upper teens last weekend. Many of their vines already had significant growth. Much of this year's crop was lost due to the freeze.

This cold may actually help delay bud burst in my vineyard and therefore reduce the risk of loss because of a late frost. Forecasts for the next week are cold with only a slight moderation .... highs most days in the 40's F, a few 30's F, with lows in the 20's F.

We might get smacked with a big snow tonight and tomorrow(6" or more!!!) Things are still pretty dormant.

Found a good link that gives cold hardiness at different bud stages:
http://www.canr.msu.edu/vanburen/grpcold.htm

Refers to Concord, but should give me a ballpark idea anyway.

It's prunning Season!

The last several weeks could not go by fast enough. After a mild December and first half of January, winter lasted until about 2 weeks ago. In the last two weeks however, things have warmed up nicely. This week, the last of the snow was out of the Vineyard, so it's time to prune.

Looks like I had very little winter kill or injury this year. Very good news. I began pruning yesterday, and it looks like only a couple a foch vines had any appreciable winter damage. The couple that had damage were due to late training , because of some late frosts in the lower south east corner. If I had to estimate at this point, I should get about 1/2 ton off of the foch this year .... assuming no late frosts, and good weather during the growing season.

Even the Landot noir looks like it did well this winter. The saint pepin, looked best of all. I didn't see any winter damage at all. I'm only 2/3 done pruning the saint pepin. I the have the Lacrosse, and Landot noir to finish up. Weather is expected to be in the 60s and 70s with scattered thunder storms the next couple of days, so hopefully I can finish that up by Monday.