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

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.

     

Second Spray

Moore's Diamond, 4-6" shoots

What I did:
     Second spray (post-dormant), consisting of Nova and Mancozeb.

Comments:

     It was a bit of a breezy, cool day but 10 days since the last spray so I needed to get it done.  The worst thing about the wind was accidentally inhaling through my nose some nova dust.  I immediately went in and did a sinus rinse.  It was dumb not to take the precaution, and wore my mask after that.  I mixed 1 1/2 gallons, which was sufficient.
     It had been a very cool, rainy weekend.  We even had a fire in the fireplace on Saturday.  It cleared off Sunday afternoon, though, and turned cool with temps in the low to mid-30's.  Patchy frost predicted tonight.

DeCaunac

The grapes seemed to like it, however, as they really started to take off the past several days, probably trying to catch up to seasonal norms.  Most varieties still seem behind and there was more winter damage on parts of the vines than I had realized.  I did some trimming before spraying and removed some more dead parts.  I still have the 3 vines that need to be removed, though two have growth at the bottom and I will cut off and remove the upper parts.  I also trimmed away basal growth on most plants, though of course as I was spraying I spotted more I will need to remove.

New grapes on DeCaunac

The St. Croix is only in its second year but really put on the grapes.  I removed them and will continue to do so if more come on so it will continue to develop good root growth.  I also removed any grapes from the Cayuga Whites, which are looking good though one died off the upper part but has strong growth down below.

Cayuga White, 2nd year

I really love this time of the year with the vineyard, when the leaves just start to come on and the new grapes begin to form.  Midsummer is probably the time I like the least, when the Japanese Beetles are in full force chewing up everything, vines are growing out of control and it's too damn hot to hardly care!

It was interesting looking at the different growth patterns, which can be determined even in the early growth stages.

Frontenac

In the Frontenac seen above, you can clearly see the strong upward growth tendency.   The Concords seem to grow helter skelter, wherever they want.

A row of Nortons

The Nortons still seem like they could use another year of development before I try to harvest any.  I may let the largest two plants develop grapes and remove them from the rest, which look more like two year vines than 4th year.

First spray

What I did:
     First spray since dormant sprayings.

Comments:
     I did a spray with copper, mancozeb, nova and captan tank mixed.  This seems to me to be a bit of overkill, but I wanted to cover the bases.  I also did a spray on the blueberries with captan only.  Buds are just breaking out, some about 1/2 inch long .  I'll try to follow in about a week to 10 days.  Things are so slow this year, way behind last year.

Cleaning up, Decisions

What I did:  
     Cleaned up under the vines, evaluated progress

Comments:
     It was a nice, sunny day, upper 50's.  After being gone to NY for two weeks, I was sure the vines would be sending out sprouts and I would need to spray.  As the photo above shows, I was only seeing bud swell on most vines.  Three vines show no budding--two aurore and one DeChanauc.  The latter does seem to show some flexibility in some of the twigs and there is budding at the base of the plant.  At this point, given the disease problems I've had with aurore and the mediocre quality of the wine, I am thinking of replacing all 3 vines with something that is well suited to the cold climate and would be more disease resistant.  I was leaning towards a white, like LaCrescent, until I read about the Frontenac red.  It sounds like a distinct possibility and I think I'll order it.  Good cold hardiness, seems to make a decent wine.  I was tempted to try the Marquette after reading its description.  Then I read about the strong recommendation that malolactic fermentation should be undertaken and I backed off--don't feel I'm quite ready to tackle that.  So I think I'll go with the Frontenac (described here) and perhaps try to move the DeChanauc that shows a little life and see if it can eventually survive.

This is one of the solar endcaps I put at the end of the pergola.  Kind of cool at night.