We need to blow our irrigation system so water doesn’t freeze in the lines when it gets cold. We continue to replace broken posts in the vineyard and we found some more mulberry trees in our Marquette vineyard that we dug up. We will winterize our Hagie sprayer, but when we were doing our preventative maintenance last week, we discovered that some of the fans needed some repairs that involve welding. Some of the other equipment also needs annual preventative maintenance.
We will spray herbicide in the rows where we will plant new vines next May, but we have to wait for perfect weather (meaning no wind). We will also use our tractor-mounted weed badger to scratch up the rows where the vines will be planted before we spray the herbicide.
Finally, this is the time of year that we go into high gear with planning for next year. One task we do now is to develop the fertilizer and fungicide spray schedule for next year. We plan fertilizer additions once we have digested our soil surveys and petiole analyses. Some of the fertilizer will be sprayed on the leaves at the same time we apply fungicide and insecticide. We do the planning now so we can get the chemicals on order.
