We got about one inch of rain on Saturday and a little less on Monday and because our vineyards are all well drained, this is all good as far as we are concerned. Of course, good drainage requires constant maintenance just like everything else does. In fact, we have one tile that is backing up so we will have a contractor come out to scope it this week in order to determine what the problem is. We may have to dig up the tile and replace a section if it collapsed.
Last week, we got most of our new vines planted at Maple Woods. We still have vines to plant at Newport Lane and at Tassel Ridge this week.
You may recall that we identified our first-ever herbicide drift damage about three weeks ago. We got help from three consultants before we called IDALS to have a field investigator visit us. He took foliage samples back for analysis to determine which herbicide is the culprit. Then, he will visit sprayers up-wind from us to find the source.
Only two grape varieties were impacted, probably because they were the only two that had budded out at the time the spray hit them. Initially, we weren’t sure that the vines would survive or, if they did, whether we might have to drop the fruit after fruit set to make sure the vines will survive the season and next winter. Fortunately, the vines look much better. They are starting to fill out and look like they should. We are happy that survival of the vines is no longer a problem. We still don’t know if we’ll have to drop fruit.
