This week, the vineyard crew will be continuing work on trellis system maintenance.
We are also starting work on converting some of our Marquette from VSP (vertical shoot positioning) to high wire (single high wire) trellis. We took advice from our vine supplier back in 2006 that VSP was the way to go with Marquette and some other Minnesota varieties, but have since learned that a high wire trellis will make it easier to control fungus in the vineyard without having to use as much fungicide.
Conversion of the trellis configuration requires cutting the vine off at the ground while it is dormant (now) and then training two suckers up from the established root system in the spring. These will serve as the trunks of the new vine that should produce grapes in two years. Because we lose production for at least one year, we will make this conversion on only 10–20% of the Marquette vines each year.
