Picked grapes at Mitchel Vineyard Aug 26, 2005

Friday I picked about 60 lbs of Foch grapes at Mitchel Vineyard near Oregon, WI.

The grapes were 4th year foch grafted on 3309 root stock. This was the first harvest from
these vines.

The amount of grapes hanging were impressive. It took very little time for me to pick 60
lbs of grapes (about 45 minutes) The 60 lbs of grapes filled two 7 gal fermenter buckets.
I had half of them crushed.

From what I have been reading lately, it sounds like things are ripening quite fast this
year. Even near Minneapolis, the grapes are getting close to pick. I don't have a
refractometer yet, but I may pick this weekend in my vineyard. I hope to have about 20
lbs of foch.

I may pick some wild ripera also. and try to make a wine from it.

My vineyard in Sampson had over 2 inches of rain Friday night (8/26/2005), so the brix may
have dropped on them ... we will see how things look.

Mid August update

Another productive weekend in the vineyard. I didn't
report the last time (weekend of July 30-31) so I'll give
that first.


July 30-31
I was surprised to see how many weeds had grown since the
previous visit (about 2 weeks earlier) The rows Loyal and
the kids weeded were pretty weed free, but since we hadn't
had too much rain up there at the time I was surprised how
many weeds were in the other rows. I ended up taking the
weed whipper to them I then sprayed one of the upper rows
with RoundUp to see how that works.

Starting to get dry up there. I didn't see any noticeable
affect on the vines, although some of the foliage is
looking a little spotty. By that I mean maybe a little
mildew ... not sure. I also see that many of the vines in
the lower middle part of the vineyard was looking like it
had some sort of nutrient deficiency. All of the
Lacrosse look bad ... not sure if it was because they got
hit so hard by the Rose Chafers, or if it is disease or a
nutrient problem.

No sign of Japanese beetles this year ... yea! Some of
the berries on some of the grapes did not look good
though. I thought it may be black rot, also in some
places the seeds of the grapes were pushing through the
vines.

The experimental pit vineyard looks awesome despite no
moisture for a while, the ground felt moist beneath the
plastic. The plastic had a few large rips in it. I think
they are due to the plastic getting brittle from sun
exposures. The vines all look very healthy and quite
large.



August 13-14

It was getting VERY dry up at the vineyard .... finally
got about 2 inches of rain a few days before I got up
there. Some of the cottonwoods are changing colors
already it was so dry. Grass didn't grow much, so that
gave me more time to spend on other things.

I put up 2 more trellis wires. I also hauled a few more
loads of stone to the seedless concord. I took leaf and
soil samples from 30 vines 10 old foch, 10 new foch, and
10 lacrosse. The soil samples were from the area of each
vine

I also got 3 samples of leaves that looked diseased for
Mike to look at under the microscope.

The grapes are already going through verasion ... most are
nearly complete. I think I will have about 40 clusters
... unless the birds get them first. I tried one berry,
and was surprised how sweet it was, and it was not as
acidic as I would have thought.

The Lacrosse still look terrible I'm afraid I may lose
some this winter. The foch look good, not great, but
good. The saint pepin look very good. If I can get them
to pollinate next year, I expect to have a small crop next
year.

The Landot noir are recovering nicely after most died back
to the roots after the winter.

As far as the pit vineyard ... what can I say ...
spectacular. Nearly all of the cab franc and merlot are
huge many with over 300 leaves each. some climbing over 5
ft already. One trunk looked to be an inch in diameter
already! Only the cab sauvignon is behind, but not too
bad. Some are nearly as large as the others. 5 did not
make it, but one did sprout eventually that I thought did
not make it. I now believe that I should have put up the
hoop house the first year. Definitely will next spring.
I have not irrigated these vine since mid July. Probably
could have through July. I will next year if they are
under a hoop house.

No sign of Japanese Beetles and Status

As of Sunday July 17 I have not seen any sign of the Japanese beetles. But I did find one
on my grapes in my backyard in Madison, so unfortunately they may still show up.

On Saturday July 16, I finished putting up trellis wire for the 4 long rows of Foch. Two
upper wires were needed to be complete. I also put in an upper wire for the saint pepin
which is doing VERY well. That leaves a top wire for Lacrosse row 2, lower wire for saint
pepin. Upper and lower for Landot Noir and upper and lower for seedless concord.

Three of my nephews ...Kellen, Brent, and Trevor , and my Brother-in-law Loyal got a lot
of weeding done this weekend. They completely weeded the three lower rows of foch.
Unfortunately, the rows at the top that had been weeded very well a few weeks ago were
once again filled with weeds.

I've decided to abandon my hopes to keep the park vineyard organic .... if I lived next to
it, maybe, but since I live so far away, it just doesn't seem possible.

I will probably use RoundUp next year ... and maybe a little this year. I think I will
start preparing a location with RoundUp for next year's Lacrescent vines.


The test vinifera vines were irrigated on Saturday for about 5 hours. No disease or
insect problems are apparent so far.


Varietal assessments so far ...

Foch
----
Doing very well. Seemed to fair the best from the Rose Chafer invasion. I decided to
let several clusters hang on the healthier vines. Lost a few over the winter in the lower
south east corner. But over all, the best of the lot ... I will be pruning some down to
the ground next year to develop better trunks.

Landot noir
-----------
Probably had the most severe winter kill, but comes back strong. I don't have a
trellis wire up yet, but will by the end of the summer. Lost a few of these also, but not
as many as I feared. Remains to be seen if they will be able to handle the NE Wisconsin
winters. Also left alone by the Rose Chafers.


Saint Pepin
-----------
Seems to be the most vigorous of my vines. Wintered very well, and has good strong
growth. The Rose Chafers did a number on a few of them, but they quickly recovered. I
will probably have a decent crop next year.

Lacrosse
--------
These poor guys are really suffering. The Rose chafers hit them very hard, and they
have been slow to recover. After being quite vigorous the first few years, they are
taking this summer very hard. I may prune these guys down to their bases, and retrain
them up for next year.

Seedless Concord
-----------------
Like the lacrosse, these were also attacked quite hard. The surprisingly, a few that
I had given up for dead have recovered. It remains to be seen if they will do well next year.


Test Plot Vines.
----------------

Cabernet Sauvignon
------------------
Doing well considering that they were not planted until Memorial Day. 6 vines did
not make it at all. The remaining 9 are slow, but coming along.

Cabernet Franc Row 2, Merlot, Cabernet Franc row 4, and Chardonnay
------------------------------------------------------------------
All vines are growing and very vigorous (1 cab franc in row 4 finally budded out, and
is much behind the others). Look completely disease and insect free. I irrigated them
again on Saturday ... for about 5 hours. No vine losses from these at all. I may water
once more, and then that will be it for the year. The experiment is going very well so far.

Rose Chafers Attack

This weekend I came to the vineyard to find new problems. The biggest of which was the
attack of the Rose Chafers at the Park vineyard. There were none the previous Sunday
(June 12), but by Saturday June 18, they had completely consumed and apparently killed
about 4 of the seedless concord near the east and of the row. They were also severly
eating several of the LaCrosse and a few of the St Pepin. I saw some on other plants, but
it was the firs four rows on the east end that were attacked most visiously.

I directly sprayed several of the infested plants with Sevin. but I didn't go overboard
spraying since some of the gapes still had flowers, and I didn't want to harm the honey bees.

Fred Dombrowski had cut hay in the adjoining field on Wednesday, and I don't know if this
contributed to the infestation.

The pit vineyard was reletively unscathed.

I had my nephew Brent as my helper this week.

Several weeds had reappeared since last week, but it wasn't terrible. It was Brents duty
to pull weeds, although he spent a lot of time fighting off horse flies, Rose Chafers and
Bumble bees.

Brent also helped me get some of the trellis wire up. ... I was able to get about five or
6 lengths of wire up. I still have about 10 lengths to go. But I'm getting there.

I was able to get the irrigation for the pit vineyard going. I water it for about 3.5
hours on Sunday ... each of the 75 vines had a 1 gal/hour dripper next to it.

The pit vines looked fairly healthy. The Cabernet Sauvignon, that had only been planted 3
weeks earlier, were just begining to leaf out. Most of the other vines had a healthy
about of leaves coming from them.

I think I saw only 3 or 4 vines from the Cab Franc, Merlot, and Chardonnay that did not
have leaves.

Weeding and canopy management/ vine training

I spent the last weekend up at the vineyard again. Most of the chardonnay has finally
broken bud. I think 2 or 3 still had not. Maybe a total of a half dozen vines have not
broken bud from the original 60 that were planted.

The cabernet Sauvignon planted two weeks later have not broken bud yet, but I do see some
signs of them pushing through.

I have not finished setting up the irrigation yet, but we have had rain every couple of
days at the vineyard, so things seemed adequately moist.

It looks like a deer may have run through the vineyard at the pit, since one of the wires
around it was pulled through the middle. I didn't see any damage though.


I had Kellan and Michael there to weed. They got about 4 full rows done. Another 4 need
to be done.

I mowed, but I set the mower high. The grass hadn't grown too much in the 2 weeks I was
gone. I plan on mowing it shorter next time.

I also spent a lot of time pruning off shoots from the bases, and tying vines to the
plastic coated metal stakes that I am using. I put the vine cuttings in between the rows
on the grass to be mulched in. I severely cut back several vines, and tried to select the
strongest cane to become the trunk. I also snipped a lot of the grapes I saw growing,
hoping to divert some of the energy into new growth.


I hope to get some trellising done next weekend, since some of my winter die off, may have been due to vine injury from poor trellis support during the growing season.

Seedless Concord

I finished putting down weed fabric on the seedless
concord, and put 12 loads of stones on it to hold it
down. I need about 16 loads to go.

I also went around some of the 3rd year Foch and LaCrosse
and trimmed some of the suckers and sprouts from the base
to divert more energy into the main trunks.

I noticed that the LaCrosse looked stronger than the foch,
and the first year saint pepin also looked really good.

Cabernet Sauvignon Finally planted

I had hired help today Jeremy agreed to help me , he
was later joined by Michael and Mikayla.
Today is Cabernet Sauvignon planting Day.
Unfortunately the new auger bent on the first hole, so it
did no better than the augers from Menards. between the
barely usable augers from Menards, and the bent one from
Farm and fleet, I was able to get all 15 holes dug for the
Cab Sauvignon ... some were a little shallow, but
workable.

so the following is the order planted at the pit
vineyard.

^
| North
|

S F M F C
S F M F C
S F M F C
S F M F C
S F M F C
S F M F C
S F M F C
S F M F C
S F M F C
S F M F C
S F M F C
S F M F C
S F M F C
S F M F C
S F M F C

S=Cabernet Sauvignon
F=Cabernet Franc
M=Merlot
C=Chardonnay

I also layed down most of the weed fabric for the seedless
concord. While I was doing that, the Kids and my brother
Jon were hand weeding some of the Foch vines at the Park
vineyard.

Irrigation pump is set up

Got out to the vineyard a little late today. I got the irrigation set up and running with a platform near the water. I also took the weed whipper to the vineyard and got a lot of weed whipping around the vineyard done. I also opened up my box of cab sauvignon, and stuck the vines in water to soak over night.

Vineyard Status

Got out to the vineyard about mid morning. I went
to check out the new Gravel Pit vineyard. The first row
of cabernet franc had pretty much all broken bud, the row
next to it which was merlot also was budded out well.
Only about half of the 3rd row which was a different type
of cabernet frac was budded out.... NONE of the chardonnay
had broken bud. Not sure why?

The park vineyard needed some major mowing, and I
spent a lot of the next hour mowing with my trail mower.
More of the vines had broken bud.

There was some surprising poor budding by some of the
Foch. Even healthy vines did not completely bud out. I
changed the oil on the weed whipper mower while it rained
in the afternoon. I then took the weed whipper to the pit
vineyard and mowed the space to the west to put down the 6
mil 10 ft x 100 ft black plastic. (the 20 x 100 stuff I
had put down before was only 4.5 mil)

I also adjusted the deer fence to accommodate the
additional row.

The Vine mix up

I spoke to Double A vineyards, and they are going to send out the Cabernet Sauvignon next week. They are a really good place to work with. More planting to do on Memorial day weekend. Unfortunately, I will need a larger high tunnel to fit the
5 instead of 4 rows of vines. I estimate that I will need a 30 ft x 96 ft tunnel now.

Planting continued

After returning the generator and drill, I headed out to the vineyards. I was able to
plant the Seedless Concord, and put up a fence around the Quarry Vineyard. The fence is not electrified (yet). But I put it up so that the wire tape is on and angled posts, to give the deer an uneasy 3-d obstacle. Hopefully that will be enough to deter them. I played a little with the irrigation, but essentially I was done for the weekend.

Spring Planting Day!

I was scheduled to plant 60 vinifera in the pit vineyard (15 Cabernet Franc, 15 Merlot, 15 Caebernet Sauvignon, and 15 Chardonnay.), and another 24 Seedless concord in the top row at the old Park Vineyard.

Another cool mostly cloudy day with threatening looking skies. I got to "pit" vineyard fairly early after picking up the rental generator, drill, and 10 guage 100ft cord. The generator fired up right away, and worked well. I put the drill auger on the drill that I rented ... (the auger is a 2 ft rod with a 2.5 inch spiral blade on it.) I had tested lightly once before, but decided to dig another test hole, to see how the drill/generator combo worked. Well I had dug more then 5 inches, when the welds holding the blade to the rod broke!

So here I was, not a vine planted, and my instrument of digging had already failed. I considered my options ... I could run to Green Bay, and blow 2 hours. I decided to try Pulaski ... I hoped that the CO-OP or the Verns Hardware would have an auger.

I got to Pulaski ... I check both places no auger. The CO-OP did have the large augers, but I didn't think they would work well going through the plastic. Plus they were tough to handle by yourself ... not to mention expensive. So I called my
Mom, and asked her to run to the a store in Green Bay to get me 4 augers .... in case more broke. I made the call from the BVM parking lot .... they were cooking booyah for something ... it smelled good, so I picked up a gallon ($16 bucks). (by the way ... it wasn't that good ... potatoes were under cooked ... not enough seasoning ... needed salt and pepper etc... does not hold a candle to Vernon's or my Dad's.)

I got back to the vineyard and worked on preparing some other things .... setting up the irrigation, marking the vine locations on the black plastic etc.

When my Mom came she dropped off the augers, and I was able to resume planting. I was much more carefully with the augers this time. I went more slowly and carefully.

I dug all of the holes for the first row. (the first row to the west) I opened up the box of vines, and stuck them in pails of water. The first west row was going to be Cabernet Franc. All of the vinifera that I was planting were grafted on to root stock. The grafts were precoated by Double A with wax to prevent the graft union
from drying out. I planted each vine such that the graft union was about 2 inches above the soil. I did no trimming of the roots. Since each hole was about 2 feet deep, and each grafted vine was 15 - 18 inches long. I lowered the root part of the vine as deep as it would go careful to keep the roots pointing down ward. I then pulled the vine out of the hole until the graft was about 2 inches above the soil level. I then push dirt down the hole .... I tried to use wet muddy dirt when possible to insure that the roots had no air spaces. I wasn't always successfully in doing so.

I ended up with one extra vine ... 16 were sent by mistake. ..... I THOUGHT AT THE TIME ....

The next row was merlot .... I again dug all 15 holes in a row ... I was getting much
better and faster with the hole drill now. Each hole could be done in about 30 seconds or so, unless I hit some clay or hard pan .... some holes seemed sandier than others too.

I planted the whole row of merlot in row two. At this point it started to rain again, so I decided to work on the irrigation for a while since I didn't want to
work in the rain with an electric drill.

I got the irrigation pump set up about 12-15 feet above the pit water. A 30 foot intake hose was attached to the pump. I made sure all fittings were tight. After great effort I was not able to get things to work. Soon my brother James stopped
by with my niece Treva. He showed me what I was doing wrong ... which was several
things. One ... I needed to close the discharge with a valve until pressure had built up ... two he thought that I was too far from the water ... even though the pump should have been able to draw water 25 feet high, he said in practice it was best to be closer to the water. So after some experimentation, we concluded I needed to be much closer to the water. Unfortunately, I will have to set up a platform closer to the water. That will have to wait until another weekend. For now, since the rain had stopped for a while, it was back to planting.

I was going to plant the Cabernet Sauvignon next. Unfortunately I could not find any
vines labeled Cab Sauvignon. Turns out they sent me two different batches of Cab franc instead ... (two different clone varieties.) This was not good news.
I really wanted the Cab Sauvignon for the Bordeaux blend that I wanted to make. I did not know if the vines were just miss labeled, or if they sent the wrong vines. So I planted the Cabernet Franc vines in the third row (these are the Cab Franc vines that matched what I ordered.) The final row was chardonnay.

At this point I drove out to the Park vineyard to dig the holes for the Seedless Concord grapes. I had to plant 24 of them, and since I had to return the drill and generator the next day, I wanted to get that done. All in all ... I broke 4 augers
for all of the plantings .... in all cases, the single weld at the top and bottom of
each auger is what broke. Since then, I have bought a new auger which has what appears to be better welds, and three of them one at the top, bottom, and middle.

By the end of the day, I was able to get all of the Vinifera that I had, planted. The concord seedless remained.

When does Spring Come any way?

Still cold wet and miserable. I got pieces of the irrigation set up. Still haven't got the pump done and running yet. I did a little more rough cutting on the hill facing the vineyard, all that remains are the bigger trees, I'll take a chain saw
to them at some point.
We had a frost last night ... James said he saw 29 or 28 F that morning. I didn't see any significant damage in the vineyard, but since many of the buds had broken, there may have been some damage that I missed.

More prep Work for spring

Thursday was colder and wetter than Wednesday, I changed the oil on the rough cut mower, and put some missing bolts in, I also got the preliminary water pump system for irrigation set up. I had intended to change oil on more equipment,
but never go to it.

First SVV blog post - preparing for May planting

I was able to mow the vineyard, and clear most of the hillside facing
the vineyard with the rough cut mower. I didn't get much else done other than some
shopping for vineyard supplies, and scoping out costs of generators, pumps etc. Rain started
just as I was finishing mowing. I still needed to do some cleanup mowing, but I
thought there would be plenty of time to do that later in the week.
The vines arrived today .... I put them in the back of the shed where
they would stay cool .... like that would be a problem.