Gopher Update

The last time I updated you on the Gopher War the headcount was 34 less gophers. I now have a new recruit in the anti-gopher army. Adrian, a hand I borrow from a neighboring vineyard has a real knack for gopher trapping, and much younger knees. The total now stand at 78 less gophers and 8 less moles. I have started keeping score of moles since they almost destroyed my front lawn. They don't harm the vineyard.

Grafting

The grafting team arrived at 6:30am today, Saturday May 18th. My 154 pinot vines and 200 pinot vines in a neighboring vineyard were to be grafted over to chardonnay.

Step one was to cut the shoot head off the vine. Then the gentleman doing the grafting peeled a little bark off the stump end, and made a small slit on either side of the trunk. Into each of the slits he slid a chardonnay bud and wrapped it with a white tape.

It took until 3:00 pm today to do all 354 vines.

Changing Over

We have begun the process of converting

 the 150 Pinot Noir vines at  the front of the property to

 Chardonnay. This was not a popular decision with all family members. When complete it will raise our  chardonnay production by 13% and give us a saleable quantity of fruit.

The first step in this process was to

 cut back the plants to a stump. All this year's growth was removed and hauled down to the burn pile. We will give the vines a few days to stop oozing sap before doing any more to them.

Saturday a budding crew will come in and graft new bud wood to the vine stumps. In about two weeks we should see new shoots of Chardonnay pushing out of what was a Pinot vine.

The clone we selected for grafting is Montrachet. The vineyard where we harvested the bud wood produces grapes for wines that consistently are getting tasting scores in the high 90's.

Life of a Farmer

The new vineyard was developing right on schedule until we were hit by a late season frost on April 29th. Temperature at the bottom of the hill fell to 30.6 degrees.

In the picture on the right you can see where the vegetation stops. On the left is a close up of a damaged rootstock.

This year's frost strategy was to rely on the 20" white grow tubes to protect our young vines. Earlier this spring before they started to push buds we pruned the vines back to about 8 inches of wood and put them in grow tubes.

The grow tube strategy was working. A vineyard check after the frost (31.6 degrees) on April 16th showed only a few leaves nipped by the frost. This frost was followed by warm weather and the vines really started to develop until the morning of the 29th when we saw a 30.6 degree frost.

My theory on why the tubes didn't protect the vines is: The shoot development in the tubes during the warm weather brought the shoots and leaves in contact with the sides of the tubes. The cold was transferred by contact and was sufficient to kill the primary bud push. The secondary buds are now starting to push. If we had turned on the frost protection system ( micro sprinklers), we probably would have raised temperatures by 1-1 1/2 degrees and damage would have been limited.

The bottom line is that about 1/3 of the vines will have retarded growth this year and may not be ready for grafting until the fall.