In spite of the fact that it has been dry for about three weeks now, the grass strip between the rows of grapes keeps growing so we have to continue mowing. It just takes lots of time when you have 75 acres and about 38,000 grape vines.
Read more →Without some human intervention, vines will grow anywhere they can and usually that means on the ground. During the first two years after planting, we work to make sure they grow up onto the trellis and develop straight trunks. In the second year, we make sure that
Read more →With young vines, we work to make sure that they have straight trunks and that the cordons are tied to the top wire in both directions from the trunk. This week, we worked on Itasca and Verona at Tassel Ridge and Steuben at Meadowcreek. Mature vines like
Read more →We will start this week by removing suckers that appear annually at the base of healthy vines. Sometimes suckers emerge right at the soil line and other times, they grow from the trunk below the soil line. In either situation, they are quite brittle and break off
Read more →Most of our Marquette and all of the La Crescent are trellised on a VSP or vertical shoot positioning trellis system. The objective of this system is to assure that the fruit and most of the leaves are exposed to morning sun on the east side of
Read more →Our grapevines are in bloom. Compared to daffodils or tulips, their blooms are very unimpressive as the attached photo shows. First of all, each flower is very small and second, it is only at the pollinating stage for 2–3 days. You have to look quick. Initially, each
Read more →This week was devoted to getting ready to plant new vines right after the Memorial Day weekend. We are replanting vines that have died and replacing some varieties that we don’t need with those for which we have greater demand. So, we have removed some La Crescent
Read more →Although our vines are nearly three weeks behind last year, the warm weather has told them that spring is here and it’s time to break buds and grow leaves. The change in just ten days is dramatic. We are bringing pruning to a close, especially in the
Read more →I am feeling as though we’ve had two days of spring and now it’s summer. I think the vines are feeling the same. We have had a very long and cool spring that has left our vines about three weeks behind last year. At the beginning of
Read more →We are still working on hand pruning Edelweiss, Brianna, and Petite Pearl at Tassel Ridge. With 17 acres of Edelweiss vines, our Edelweiss blocks at Tassel Ridge are huge and they take a long time to hand prune. As soon as we finish the Edelweiss, we will
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