Bud break!

Bud break occurred over the period of May 2nd - May 10.   All cultivars have now broken bud.   Damage from frost and grape flea beetles appear to be much less than I feared.

Cooler April Ends

It looks like the warm March was fortunately followed by a moderately cool April.   Just cool enough to slow the buds,  but warm enough to escape significant cold damage.   In fact, this past Thursday we tied our lowest temperature (25.9F) since the beginning of March.    It will be a week or two before the full extent of the damage is known.   It looks like Foch was the most damaged.   It buds early, and is planted in the lowest part of the vineyard.  Marquette and lacrescent may have also had slight damage because they also are early budding cultivars. The most significant damage on those three cultivars may actually be due to grape flea beetles.   Again,  it will be a week or two before the full extent of the beetle damage can be seen.
 We should see a significant warm up in the next week.   I would expect Marquette to break bud by the end of this week.   Foch and lacrescent should be breaking early the following week.

Planting another Acre next year ... maybe

Future Expansion

I'm seriously considering putting in one more acre of vines next year.   I made a rough sketch of where they could go (see the above picture; the blue lines indicate new vineyard blocks).   The vines to the north of the building would be cold hardy seedless cultivars (about 80-100 vines).   The rest would either be Petite Pearl ( a U of Minn red wine cultivar) or Frontenac Blanc (a U of M white wine cultivar) or half of each.

Ideally the rows should be oriented North South, but due to the terrain, I will probably try to match the hill side with the vines to the south and south west of the building.

The vines are a lot of work.  Maybe I'm crazy to plant more vines, but I feel I need to plant this last acre at this site.

Cold returns for a few days

The cold has returned to Wisconsin.   Last night we got down to about 26F.    Some buds may have already seen some damage.  At least foch and Lacrescent had already approached full swell.


Below is a nice table that shows critical temperatures for bud survival.  The table below was originally on the Michigan State University Extension web site.    That link is now dead.   (I will gladly link to another source if someone has it.)



CRITICAL TEMPERATURES FOR GRAPES

Growth Stage	Description	No Damage	10% Kill	50% Kill	90% Kill
Dormant	Bud not swollen.		Varies with conditions.
First Swell	Early swell, bud brown, no color.		13	7	-3
Full Swell	Late Swell, swollen bud looks pink.		26	21	10
Bud Burst	Leaves at tip of bud separate.	30	28	25	16
First Leaf	One leaf out at 90° to the stem.	30	28.5	27	21
Second Leaf	Two leaves out, 90° to the stem.	30	29	28	22
Third Leaf	Three leaves out, 90° to the stem.		28		26
Fourth Leaf	Four leaves out at 90° to the stem.		28		27

(The above table and photos originally from Michigan State University Extension) 

I believe the 10% and 90% kill numbers originally came from Rutgers and refers to Wine grapes.   The 50% kill numbers come from Washington State University and refer to concord grapes.  I do not know the accuracy of the numbers with respect to cold hardy vines such as French Hybrids, University of Minnesota cultivars, or Swenson cultivars.   It is interesting none the less.  

Not yet guys!!!

Unpruned lacrescent bud swell on March 21, 2012

It's March 21 and the temperature was over 80F in the vineyard today.   We are seeing significant bud swell on lacrescent and foch.   Cooler weather is expected, so hopefully the vines will hold off a few more weeks.   If we see bud break in the next week or two, the risk of a hard frost is still quite high.

Slow down guys.

Too Warm?

Weather Underground Forecast for March 18- March 21 (observation from Sat. night 11:40 pm)

This is crazy weather.  The forecast high for tomorrow (Sunday, March 18) is 81 F.   If I wasn't a grape farmer, this would be awesome, but this could be really devastating for grapes.   If we have bud break in the next few weeks, the chance of a hard frost between bud break and mid-May is quite likely.   This could mean a severe hit to yields this year.   On the other hand, if we do have an early bud break, and no frost, we may have one of the best grape years in memory.  Unfortunately the former is more likely than the latter.

I spent a few hours pruning Prairie star today.   I saw some bud swell compared to last weekend.   Pruning cuts from last weekend were actively dripping.   The vines look great, but the a few frosty nights would be great to slow things down.  

If I didn't have such limited opportunities to prune, I would delay pruning as long as possible.   Delayed pruning is beneficial for delaying bud break since buds towards the ends of canes break first.    Based on the extended forecast, I may not have all of my vines pruned before bud break.  Hopefully slightly cooler temperatures forecast for next weekend will slow things down just enough.

Pruning has begun

Before

After

We began pruning the vines on Saturday, March 10.   Above are some marquette vines.   We are doing most of the vineyard as VSP (vertical shoot position).   We leave about 25-30 buds per vine.  

The vines look good.   I've seen very little winter damage as expected.   The next couple of weeks are going to be crazy warm for March.   I wouldn't be surprised if bud swell or bud break could occur a month early.   Not something I hope for.   We are bound to get a frost between now and May, and a bud break in April will surely mean bud/shoot damage.

We will see what happens.

We are now zone 5a!

The USDA just released their new plant hardiness zone map. We went from 4b to 5a. Wow.

3 month time lapse of the vineyard

We got out first major snow of the season at the vineyard today.   I thought this would be a great opportunity to put up a time lapse from the last 3 months of vineyard block two.   The animation starts around August 15, and ends today.   I put in several frames from today to get the full impact of the snow.

It's a little hard to tell from the animation, but the first hard frost occurs around Oct 27.

In a few weeks I will post a season summary for Sampson Valley Vineyard.

Grape Picking Today!

We are picking grapes today.

We survived a 3 week late bud break, a late frost, a very rainy June, record heat, black rot, and an early frost.

If good wine needs the grapes to suffer, this should be a good year.

On to the picking!

Some progress on ripening

Lacrescent and Frontenac sees big increase in the last week. Others have more modest increases. We will be picking all varieties on Sept 24.
Foch:  18.8
St. Pepin:  14.3
Lacrosse:  13.2
LaCrescent vb1:  19.5
Frontenac:  23.2
LaCrescent vb3:  22.4
Prairie Star:  19.3

Latest Brix readings

Readings for grapes sampled at 7:00 pm on 9/5/2011

Prairie Star - 18.3
La crescent vineyard block 3   -  20.6
La Crescent vineyard block 1  -  17.6
Frontenac - 20.9
Foch - 17.8
St Pepin - 13.4
Lacrosse - 11.5

Brix onn Aug 31, 2011

First brix measurements of the year!(Aug 31, 2011)

Frontenac:  20.6

La Crescent vineyard block 3: 20.0

Prairie Star:  17.7

La Crescent Vineyard block 1:  17.7

Foch:  16.7

La Crosse:  10.7

St. Pepin:  12.8

Nets are going on!

I started putting nets on this weekend. In the past I only netted the red wine grapes. This year I am netting everything that has fruit.

There are a lot of turkeys in the area, and the low hanging lacrescent would be too tempting to them. Also I did see some bird damage on the St Pepin and Lacrosse last year, so the netting should offer some protection. I hope to have everything netted by the end of the week.

Veraison has begun

It's about a week later than I expected compared to other growers around the state, but veraison has begun. First clear signs were yesterday, but things are really moving fast now. Frontenac is the furthest along. Foch has color only on a few clusters. Luckily the hot summer has speed ripening to be close to normal. Harvest is now looking like the second or third weekend in September if the weather cooperates.

WTP? What the? .... Phylloxera

Phylloxera has appeared on the vines at the vineyard. I've seen it in the past on the wild grape vines on the property, but this is the first time I've seen it on the cultivated varieties. I saw 3 lacrosse vines with it and one marquette. None so far on the frontenac. Frontenac is the vine typically affected most severely in the midwest.

New Weather Station

A new weather station has been installed at the vineyard. No more relying on near by observations. The information is streaming to the Weather Underground using wview software. You can see the obs updating once a minute here

http://www.wunderground.com/weatherstation/WXDailyHistory.asp?ID=KWISAMPS2

The Weather station is an Ambient Weather WS-2080. It's far from top of the line, but will serve its purpose. I have it in a temporary spot right now, but I will move it to it's permanent location in the spring.

I got to test out the precipitation gauge this afternoon. It read a bit low compared to a nearby rain guage. This may be due to the strong winds during the storm. I will try to correct this issue when the station is moved to its final location.

Black Rot. Yes, it is as bad as it sounds

Black rot on Marquette grapes

For the first time, I am seeing significant black rot in the vineyard. The infection was seen on the leaves as early as June 20, but the grapes showed the tell tale signs on July 18. In about a 48 hour period the fruit went from looking like a huge beautiful crop to shriveled black raisins.

I primarily see the problem on just the marquette and frontenac. Most of the others have just a tiny bit. I estimate the crop loss on the marquette to be greater than 90%, the frontenac loss is about 70-80%. All other varieties have less than 5% loss.

The heavy June rains at the vineyard coupled with the poor drying conditions throughout the entire month probably facilitated the severe infection.

A couple of interesting notes..... the Marquette were the hardest hit. When I look at the disease susceptibility in the Midwest Spray guide, it says slightly (the lowest rating). I see little or no black rot on the lacrescent and lacrosse, which are classified as moderate and very susceptible respectively.

The Marquette are probably located in the part of the vineyard with the best air flow.... however.... the rows are only spaced 8 feet apart (probably a bad choice for many reasons) All other rows in the vineyard are spaced 10 feet apart, including the frontenac. I'm not convinced row spacing is a huge factor here though. At the most likely time of infection, the shoots were pretty small, and the closeness of the rows did not inhibit airflow significantly.

I have also learned from a couple of other growers that they too have seen significant black rot issues this year on marquette. This leads me to believe that marquette may be significantly more susceptible to black rot than has been published.

So how do I avoid this from happening again ..... follow the the recommended spray schedule! My spray program was much more intensive this year than in the past, but I missed the pre-bloom spray. This was probably the biggest reason for my infection. In general I use organic sprays in the vineyard when possible, but black rot is a different animal than powdery mildew and downy mildew.

This reminds me of the phrase "faster, better, cheaper, choose two. In this case, Organic, high quality, consistent crop load... choose two.

Building shell is complete

Training vines