Late May management

What I did:
     Tied new vine growth, sprayed and fertilized

Comments:

     In the past week, the trees have finally fully leafed out, even the oaks and other nut trees.  It has been a very slow spring, but things are gradually catching up.  What is surprising is that, in spite of the cool weather, we seem to have had no frost damage on fruit from garden to vineyard to orchard.
     Vines right now are growing pretty quickly, quite a change from 10 days ago when new shoots were only about 4 inches long.  I had to tie up a number of young shoots, getting some nice-looking shape to some of the newer vines such as the Nortons.  I also trimmed base growth again and cut out some more dead wood.
     Kathy picked up a Niagara, which I put in place of the dead Aurore.  I cut back the other two vines that had severe die-back, though I should have been more careful with the DeChaunac, because I cut off more live growth than I should have.  Still, it is growing well now from the stump.  I put cages around the young plants.
     I used Mancozeb and Quintec in the 3rd spraying.  This will likely be the final application of Mancozeb and I will begin to use Captan in the next spraying.

Large number of clusters on Frontenac

     Grape growth has been spotty.  The DeChaunac will not have a harvest as good as last year, and the Concords and Niagaras are not as strong either.  The Frontenac, however, has the most robust production I've seen yet.  I need to look to see if I need to thin clusters.  As the grapes mature, I know there are always more grapes than I think in early season. We'll have to see if that is true this year.  My goal is to get vines healthier this year even if we harvest fewer grapes.

     I also decided to do some 10-10-10 fertilizing.  I think I have only given the vines fertilizer one other time. This is totally unscientific, since I have not had the soil tested.  We'll just evaluate their response to this.  The soil, for the most part, is really pretty poor--a lot of clay out there.

     As I did my spraying, I had to be careful around one of the bluebird boxes since, as you can see, there are some new occupants.  They were in eggs yesterday when I sprayed, and you can see eyes are closed yet.  A wren occupies one of the other bluebird houses, and she has almost flown smack into me a couple times since she waits until I am right next to the box before she departs.