This week, we finished the pruning and tying up of Foch and LaCrosse at Newport Lane and Itasca, Verona, and Crimson Pearl at Tassel Ridge Vineyard. We took advantage of still air to spray fungicide and we used our weed badger to clean weeds out of a four-foot-wide strip under the trellis where we will plant LaCrosse at Maple and Clarion at Meadowcreek East.
Our new vines will arrive on Monday, May 22 as cuttings and we will be ready to plant. Weather permitting, we will be mowing all vineyards.
We have been asked frequently about how recent cold snaps and frequent storms with hail have impacted us. We have been lucky and haven’t seen any damage yet. Our vines were budded out far enough that the cold temperatures didn’t impact them and the hail we got was not very heavy. Here is a photo of a Marquette vine at the eastern edge of Meadowcreek Vineyards taken on Friday, May 12, 2023.
These Marquette flower buds are not grapes. Each of the round balls is a capsule containing a flower, once it is pollinated, it will become a grape. Grape vines are, for the most part, self-pollinating so we are not dependent on bees or hummingbirds to do the pollinating.
