In addition to being a place where we grow grapes, our vineyards also attract a range of trees like cottonwoods and mulberries. We don’t want these and other “foreign” trees and plants in the vineyard because they compete with the grapes for water and nutrients in dry years. Furthermore, when they get big enough, they interfere with our pruning and harvesting machinery. So, once per year, we go through each of our four vineyards removing them. This is done with a shovel and lots of elbow grease. The bigger trees require a tractor and chain because their roots can be three feet long. This work is a major-league hassle! After finishing tree removal at Tassel Ridge vineyard, our crew will move to Meadowcreek and remove trees in our Marquette blocks.
As soon as it cools down, we will start spraying fungicide in all vineyards.
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.
