From Our Vineyard

We are taking samples of grapes every day or so now and are running chemistries in our lab as well as tasting the fruit. We are also picking samples that we will take to Iowa State University to test for Yeast Assimilable Nitrogen. The results will tell

This is the time of year when we collect petiole samples (stems of leaves) and send them to a lab for analysis. We collect the stems of certain leaves because the stems are the pipelines of a grape vine. All of the nutrients in the vine travel

Veraison is an annual milestone in grape ripening. It is when the red/purple grapes change from a hard, milky-green to purple. That process started late last week in our Marquette and Frontenac. St. Croix, Sabrevois, and Foch will follow soon. Veraison also happens with white grapes. They

We have a lot of new vines at our Maple Woods vineyard and we will finish tying them to the pencil rod and top wire and also remove any suckers. We have more fungicide to apply. Because of our high humidity right now, this is really important.

This week, we will finish tying Sabrevois and St. Croix and removing suckers. We will finish hedging the Marquette in Meadowcreek West and work on the Marquette trellis. Mowing never seems to go away. We will be spraying some herbicide at Tassel Ridge and at Meadowcreek. And,

The first order of business this week involves removing the Edelweiss trunks in four rows at Tassel Ridge. These vines were originally planted in about 2007 and now are missing arms, are really mis-shapen, are dead, or have what appears to be diseased trunks. We are starting

We have blocs of one year-old Brianna, Crimson Pearl, and Petite Pearl at Tassel Ridge that are now almost up to the top wire. We tie them to the pencil rod to assure that their trunks grow straight. This is not just to make them look pretty

Warm weather has encouraged rapid growth in our vines. Most grape varieties have already set their fruit. We are removing suckers and tying up vines, applying fungicide and even a little herbicide under vines. We also start to remove leaves so that the fruit is exposed to

The warm temperatures we’ve been experiencing have promoted flowering of our vines. Forget right now about picking a bouquet of grapevine flowers. These flowers are REALLY small and not pretty. Only a grape vine loves them! Anyhow, each flower is almost 1/8 of an inch high and

We finished pruning last week and now one person is dedicated to mowing and another to spraying fungicide. The rest of our vineyard crew will work to get our Marquette tucked up into the catch wires and then we’ll work on removing suckers from the Edelweiss and