Fifth Spraying

What I Did:
     Spray with Seven, Nova and Captan

Comments:
     Well, they're back.  We were gone for the weekend, and I figured the Japanese beetles would be making their emergence any day.  So far, the numbers are not overwhelming, but I'm not getting too excited--it's still early.

I took this photo on one of the prairie plants, since the Seven took care of all the bugs on the grapevines.  I fully plan to stay on top of them this summer, and see if we can make a dent in their numbers.  Not that we haven't tried in the past.  Maybe we have made a difference with all the thousands we killed by spraying and just by dumping them into soapy water.  I'd like to think so anyway.

I was glad it was a very calm afternoon, since the white clover is in full bloom, as you can see, and our honey bees are busy collecting nectar.  I wanted to minimize any drift and there was virtually no breeze.

Moore's Diamond

Grapes are looking good.  We did notice some spotting on a few and a bit of what I would call "rust" on some.  So far, though, I haven't seen any sign of grapes splitting open or the bird's eye sign of anthracnose.  I'm keeping fingers crossed.  On the De Chaunac, though, I did find some blotchy, bluish discoloration.  I saw this last year on some of them.  I'll have to keep track to see if the discolored berries have problems.

Purplish discoloration  on De Chaunac

Later in the week, I'll need to do some more canopy management, since the vines are really growing vigorously right now.

Fourth Spraying

What I Did:
     Removed some leaves on concords, sprayed with Nova and Captan

Comments:
     It was a calm, dry morning and had been 10 days since the last spray.  I removed some leaves from the Concord to help with the drying, since we've had so much rain, and to enable better spray penetration.  I could have done the same with the Niagaras as well but will work on those in the coming week.

     The grapes are looking good.  These are probably the biggest on any of the plants.  I think this is Frontenac though  it could be the Reliance seedless.  Clusters on many of the vines seem to be pretty loose this year.  Even some of the other seedless varieties, which normally have pretty tight clusters, seem loose.

     The young plants are looking good.  The first above is the re-growth of a DeChaunac and it's looking healthy.  The one on the right is a second year Cayuga White.  They are really growing tall already.

          In other parts of the garden, the sunflowers are off to a good start.  The ones on the right of the door to the blueberry house are volunteers mostly with planted sunflowers on the left side.

     Blueberries are really filling out and it looks like we'll have a decent crop after all, though not as good as some years.  They certainly are behind, though.  We have picked ripe berries by this time other years.  If they hold on, we could have a good number of pecans our our tree this year, too, far more productive than our "crop" of 5 nuts last year.  The currants are looking good, too, and I really need to study to see when to determine ripeness with those.  Our sour cherries are not as plentiful, and we lost one tree.  There are quite a number of sweet cherries but they all seem to have been infested with worms and thus are not nearly as enticing.  I'll need to spray those next year I guess.

Bottling Time!

What I did:
     Bottled Aurore, Blueberry, Sour Cherry and Black Raspberry

Comments:
     Though working with the vineyard is a lot of fun, the fruits of all that labor are what it's all about.  Or at least much of what it's about--I do enjoy working with the vines.  I bottled 4 gallons, 5 bottles of each type.  I'll give a little description of each.

Our Grumpy Bee label

      Aurore:  Our harvest was pretty slight last year, as one vine was in decline and disease had hurt the grapes, as well as bird attacks.  So I was probably fortunate to even get a good gallon.  And a pretty good gallon it turned out to be.  Nice and smooth, though a bit quick on the finish.  Very drinkable, but probably won't have a long shelf life.  Good clarity.

     Sour Cherry:  We had a good cherry crop last year, so this was the first cherry wine made in the last couple years.  Tangy, just on the edge of being a bit biting, I decided to add just a half cup of sugar to the gallon which smoothed it out nicely.  It will be a tasty treat in the months to come.

Here are the four varieties we bottled.

     Blueberry:  This was our first attempt at blueberry wine.  We have 6 fantastic blueberry bushes that are terrific producers, but I've never cared much for the thought of blueberry wine until I tried some recently and found it surprisingly good.  I did not add any sugar--it has enough sweetness on its own without having to add anything. It has a nice, mellow taste, nice aftertaste. The color is very similar to the cherry, as you can see in the photo above.   I'll see how a couple bottles go before I decide if I'll use any of my precious blueberries on wine next year.

     Black Raspberry: We had a great raspberry crop last year, between our own domestic berries and the wild ones, which had a banner year as well.  This one is much better than the last I made, which had a bitter aftertaste.  This one leaves you with a pronounced but not overwhelming black raspberry taste.  Kathy thinks it tastes like blueberries.  I did not add any sugar, so finishes dry as well though still has a natural sweet flavor.

Of course, tasting it as it is bottled is mandatory, not only to make sure it hasn't "gone bad" or needs adjustment, but also because it's fun!  Cheers!

Third Spray

What I Did:
     Spray with combination of Quintec and Captan

Comments:
     It was a bit of a windy day and very warm (94 degrees), which was a bit of a shock after spending last week in Northern Minnesota where we had the furnace on a couple days, but I decided I needed to spray anyway.  It turned out not to be too bad and the spray went on well.

Nice clusters on DeChaunac

     I did spray under and around the vines with Roundup yesterday as well.  It was calm and I removed any low growth around the base of the vines.  Weeds were really growing, though I had thought a couple weeks ago things were in pretty good shape in that regard.  I was wrong.

Flowers on Frontenac

     Some vines have produced a strong secondary bloom, and you can see the flowers in the photo above while other fruit have firmly set on.  The Concords are already close to needing some canopy management.  That may be necessary in the next two weeks.

     All the young plants seem to be doing well.  The Cayuga Whites, in their second year, show strong growth.  They aren't doing much horizontally but are really shooting up.

A Cayuga White, growing vertically