All 800 pounds of rooted cuttings have arrived, and we will start this week to get them planted before they dry out. The planting actually starts at Maple Woods vineyard where we are replacing vines that died during the winter. We are not expanding our vineyards this year but are only replacing vines that died in past years.
We have a special sprayer that allows us to carefully spray Roundup just under our vines without impacting the vines themselves. Our objective is to kill weeds that will compete with the vines for water later in the season.
The fungicide sprays are just the first in a 7–10 day schedule of applications designed to keep fungus on the defensive. We will spray all the way up until just before the first frost.
Finally, our Foch and some of our Frontenac are very slow to break bud this season and we’ve delayed pruning them as a result. We will take 2–3 people to focus on pruning these vines late this week.
