Black Rot - 3nd Offensive

Given that the forecast for the weekend didn't look so well I wanted to get a few shots early Saturday morning on the state of affairs in the vineyard, especially on the Black Rot mummy control.  Since the 4th of July we'd taken some time to try and pick a few of the mummies off the vines, mainly in the Golden Muscat and Frontenac rows since the Concords in 2009 had done relatively well.  But it was clear that the Reliance and especially the Concords were in need of some immediate help.  

A few photos from this morning....

Mummies on the vine

Bit more defined in a cluster

Uhgg!

Lots of black rot in the vines, especially in the Concords.  However Kim and Liz were able to pick off a majority of the mummies from the vines themselves.  If my tally was right they had about 4-5 buckets full of mummified grapes and this should help not only next spring but also for the rest of the year. Still some to go on the Concords and Reliance but looking much more manageable thanks to them. 

Some great resources from Michigan State University on the fungus (Guignardia bidwellii) and also an MSU weather calendar indicating local conditions and the calculation of ripe environments for black rot.

http://www.grapes.msu.edu/blackrot.htm
http://ipm.msu.edu/fruitpests/blackrot.htm
http://enviroweather.msu.edu/homeMap.php

Japanese Beetle Returns!

Part of the weekend's work was welcoming back an old nemesis in the vineyard, the Japanese Beetle.  Sadly the very first vine that I saw coming into the vineyard (the row 1, vine 1 Cayuga that is just coming back this summer) had 4 beetles feasting away on it!

Japanese Beetles on developing Cayuga Vines

I learned later that one of the toughest things in starting the vineyard was in controlling the beetle, where literally bags of captured beetles were filled.  Traps didn't seem to help, they only seemed to attract more.  This was back when the vineyard was just getting started.

Although I didn't see many on the other vines in my walkaround I did notice some leaves that were eaten away.  Liz also noticed them when she was out in about helping clean up the black rot.  Something we'll have to try and rid. 

More detailed info on Japanese beetles
http://www.canr.msu.edu/vanburen/japbet.htm

July 11th

The weekend was hot and the vineyard seemed pretty dry.....at least it felt dry!

Kim and I removed almost every berry with blackrot in the third row from the south. (I'd venture to say we removed 99% of them, but leaving room for human error I am sure we missed a few.) That row had one entire 3 gallon bucket of berries removed from the vineyard. The entire vineyard except the west half of the Concord's were sprayed with the Immunox/ Daconil solution Dad mixed. Vines were pruned and trained by ties to help establish a better canopy where the need was recognized.

The little guys Joe was able to find during the July 4th weekend have actually done surprisingly well in the past week without being choked out by the grass. More grass was removed around them to promote airflow and eliminate competition.

Mike mowed the entire vineyard between rows and around the exterior perimeter, and did much weed whacking around posts.

Vineyard Photos from the 4th

Some photos on the July 4th weekend.  Sunset in the vineyard is a beautiful time. 

My favorite....looking west into the sun.

Towards North at the neighbor

East along the Muscat row

East along the Frontenac row.

Spraying the Vineyard

After a fairly normal sleep I was able to get up and head to the vineyard to do some final work and spray Tom's remaining fungicide.

I decided my plan of attack would be to target the black rot happening in the 3rd row (Golden Muscat). I was able to pick most of the berries that were already rotten up to the 10th vine. At each vine I plucked what I could then applied the spray. The Frontenacs in row 2 didn't exhibit much if any black rot so I quickly sprayed them just for good measure.

After a few hours of that I walked around the first row to see if there truly was nothing growing and to my surprise there were little chutes of vines coning up where the plantings were done years ago. The roots still must be active and are trying to come up. I walked each row and noticed there were actually quite a few chutes where previously we thought everything was dead. So I updated the map and am posting it here.

Next things to do would be to make a new batch of spray and apply it to the remaining vines that were not sprayed. Also any black rot berries that are on the vines could be picked off, with carefulness not to leave any mummies behind as the fungus winters and comes back in spring. Another thing would be to trim under the concord row to promote some more air flow under the canopy.

Fun weekend in the vineyard!

July 4th Weekend

Tad and I cleaned out some of the undergrowth and trimmed back alot of the grass and under canopy growth.

Notes from http://www.theworldwidewine.com/wine_trivia/how_many_wine.php

One bottle of wine contains about 25.6 ounces, or for those whose think in metric terms 0.75 liters. This is usually considered to be 4 glasses. As a rule of thumb, it takes about 2.4 pounds of grapes (usually 600 to 800 grapes) to produce a bottle of wine.

Looking at wine production another way, there are about eight bunches of grapes per bottle or three to five bottles per average grapevine.

Be careful about averages, the actual numbers vary widely. For example, Chateau d’Yquem, the most famous estate in Sauternes region of France, produces approximately one bottle of wine from eight vines. But what a bottle, this wine is generally considered the world’s greatest sweet wine, and has merited a unique rating for over 150 years.

What about acres? On the average an acre of land produces 5 tons of grapes, or, in other terms, a little less than four thousand bottles of wine. In other words, if you drank a bottle of wine a day, it would take eleven years to consume the output of a one acre vineyard.