Tuesday, May 27, 2008

Lateral Shoot Removal

So now that the vines have bloomed, it's time to open up the canopy in the 'fruit zone' (where the grapes will grow and hang). In order to do this, we need to definitely remove all lateral shoots in the fruit zone, and eventually consider removing additional leaves that would get in the way of the fruit being able to develop, and the spray to effectively get int the canopy.




Back to the lateral shoots: they're the shoots that emerge just above one of the main leaves on an inital shoot. Here's a before/after picture (the after picture shows no lateral shoot).

It's pretty tedious work to remove all of those, but we've been doing a row a day. Meanwhile, I'm collecting petiole samples, which is the leaf stem *opposite* a blooming cluster. We'll dry them out and take it to Soil & Plant Laboratory in Santa Clara for analysis.

Thursday, May 22, 2008

Yellowing on Leaf

I noticed this pretty color scheme on a leaf, but suspect it might be some flavor of mineral deficiency.

Our petiole analysis is being run, so I'll wait until I hear back on that to dedicate too many brain cells to this, since it was a pretty isolated incident.

Wednesday, May 21, 2008

Vines Gone Wild

Wow, there's been a lot of growth out in the vineyard! They did get a good amount of water, then a 3-day heatwave and lots of sun in between, so it checks out. Looking down the center of two rows, I see I have my work cut out for me! Time to remove those extra canes, and be sure vines are growing in the trellis system - but I'm trying to hold out until bloom, such that it'll be a bit easeir to take petiole samples for analysis (more on that soon!). Given the growth, and lack of apparent water stress, I'm cutting rows 3-6 off for now; hand-watered rows 1-2 and am drip irrigating rows 7-9 for about 3 hrs this morning.

Monday, May 12, 2008

Poppies in bloom

Look - the poppies have finally bloomed!
OK, back to tasks: today's was to spray the vines with a 1.5% solution of Stylet Oil. It sure is nicer to spray than sulfur, I hope it does the trick against that pesky powdery mildew!

Wednesday, May 7, 2008

Water-log

Watered the vines today; this time for 6 hrs on account of what may or may not be excessive redness on the canes. I would LOVE an easy way to measure whether the vines have too much / too little water - don't think one exists, but I'll keep looking!
Oh and those green worm-bug-caterpillars appear to be gone now. I remember the problem being worse last year, I'll take it as a sign that our diligence has paid off.

Friday, May 2, 2008

Caterpillar's Lunch

This week's challenge has been some munching worm-like critters on the vines.

Just next to my thumb joint is a green bending-backwards worm-like creature. He's not fuzzy in real life, despite the terrible focus in the picture. It looks a lot like a moth caterpillar, but I'm not great at identification. Could be a hornworm too. In any case, they hang on to the backs of leaves and munch away this time of year.
Rows 8 & 9 are the worst, where they've eaten more than 25% of the leaves & vines, but I found a handful on row 7, and very isolated incidents below there.

Removal is just that - you find 'em and pick them off the leaves. Sometimes you can shake the vine and they'll fall off - but even with a good shake those with really good suction-ey feet stay on the leaves!

From there, what I've read is that it's no good to just flick them away - if you do, the cycle of life will come back to bite the vines again. You need to transport them far away from the vineyard or go for the smush method :-(. I read a legend once that if you put them in a blender with some water and then spray that on your foliage it'll keep them away. I'm skeptical but we'll see if I get more desparate as the weeks go on.

Oh and today after removing the munching critters I sprayed - 1.5% solution of Stylet Oil.