This week, we expect to finish replacing posts at Meadow Creek and then focus on removing trees growing in our Marquette vineyard.
We’ve taken advantage of cooler temperatures to start spraying fungicide in all vineyards. This week, we’ll finish up at Meadowcreek and then spray Maple Woods.
And, we are using barn paint to seal the tops of all 10,000 posts in our vineyards. How is that for a painting job? We’ve concluded that our posts are starting to rot from the top down because we removed the top six inches of each post three years ago in order to allow clearance for our Hagie sprayer. As a result, we lost the protection of the CCA-treated wood. We are hoping that the paint will address that problem. We will continue painting posts at Meadowcreek as soon as we finish at Maple Woods.
The process of vines hardening off for winter is gradual starting in mid-August. New growth from 2015 develops a tough outside layer that gets more protective as the weather gradually cools. This year, we have not yet experienced our first killing frost but the vines are getting ready. As soon as the vines experience the killing frost (defined at 28°F for four hours), they finalize the process of going into dormancy by dropping leaves that are now very dark in color.
