Poppies!

If you look closely you can see a bumble bee in the California Poppy.

Stop it, it's not fall yet!

Already, we're seeing the red-leaf look in row 7.  Seriously?  After providing Epsom salt supplements to the soil, and spraying an iron & zinc with the Stylet oil, it's hard to believe this is still a nutrient deficiency.  Will do another round of Epsom salt to the soil, continue with iron & zinc foliar and see if it gets better - or at least compare to last year to see if we're better or worse.

Late May on the Hill

Still growing!

12" shoots

The shoots are now 12" long (for some reason, the upper rows grew faster than the lower rows are), so this week the grapes got their first PM preventative Stylet Oil spray, along with foliar zinc & iron.  Bring on the growth!

Better-late-than-never dormant spray?

We finished pruning (just in time ... usually like to finish by mid-March), and now the grapes are ready to grow for the season.

However, due to the late pruning I didn't quite get around to a Lime Sulfur dormant spray, and wondered if now (roughtly 50% bud swell) is too late.  So, I asked the folks on winepress.us and got these responses.

I decided to spray 2.5 oz per gallon (the light end of dormant season strength) on odd rows; lighter concentration on even rows.  Avoided spraying dormant buds.

Oatmeal Stout

I hate having perfectly good winemaking gear to go waste, so this time of year I like to do some other type of fermenting: beer!

I've made 3 beers over the past 2 years - all from kits put together by our local wine/beer supply store, and all turned out surprisingly good. I'm a fan of Oatmeal Stouts, however, so had to concoct my own recipe.  The pressure!  

With a little help from the folks at the beer supply store, I took a hybrid approach and modified one of their kit recipes.  Here goes:

Steep for 30 minutes @ 160F:

1lb. Crystal Malt

1 lb. Pale Chocolate Malt

1 lb. Flaked Oats

1/4 lb. Roasted Barley

Strain and transfer to kettle, stir in

3 lbs Munich Malt Extract Syrup

At boil set time for 30 minutes and add:

2 oz Perle Hops (awesome floral smell)

Add 1/2 oz Cascade Hops (some floral, more earthy/mossy to my nose) and set timer for 20 more minutes

Add 1/2 oz Cascade Hops and a Whirfloc tablet and set timer for 10 more minutes

Turn off burner and stir in 

6 lbs. Pale Malt Extract

1/4 lb. Lactose

Cooled, added enough water to get just over 5 gallons.  SG = 1.067.

Pitched ale yeast (62-72 degree range), and will let ferment away until SG down to 1.02-ish.

UPDATE: turned out good not great; next time I'll eliminate the lactose and reduce the smoky grains.  This article from Beersmith provided some good specific insights.

Also happened upon this well organized pro-con list on various homebrew topics.

Farmer Lisa's back

Here we are, mid-January, vines dormant, and we're enjoying weather in the high 60s. With no end in sight (well, next 10 days.)

So I've gotten a good jump on soil amendments & mulching.   I'm continuing the plan of 1/2 c E.B.Stone organic fruit & citrus food per vine.  Not a good time to add fertilizer, but this blend seems to be more of a soil additive and very slow / long-term acting, so seems OK to add now.

In addition, I'm topping that off with:
- 1/3 c iron sulfate, to address mineral deficiency in soil
- as much steer manure as I can carry - about 2 cubic feet per row
- an extra layer of live oak mulch

I've completed rows 7 & 8, row 6 has everything but iron.  Will continue down the vineyard throughout the week, hope to be mostly done by our next rains.