We enjoyed good weather and were focused on mechanical pruning this week. As of Wednesday mid-day, the vineyard team had mechanically pruned the Marquette and the La Crescent vineyards which total about ten acres. Each day, we finish pruning by early afternoon and we then return to the vineyard with a Pull-Blast sprayer and apply Spurshield®, a polymer that encourages rapid healing of pruning wounds so that grapevine trunk diseases don’t get into the vine through the wounds. With a total of 64.5 acres of vines in three vineyards, we are far from finished but we have already made a nice start.
We have been asked why we prune. Why don’t we just let nature take its course? The main issue is that the vine produces fruit (grapes) so that it can reproduce. Our objective is a little different in that we want high-quality grapes that will help us make good wine. With pruning, we control the amount of grapes that each vine can produce and even the positioning of the grapes on the vine. We try to assure that grapes will be exposed to sunlight and that we have enough leaves to do a good job of converting sunlight, CO2, and water into the sugar that the vine needs to thrive. And, of course, we need the vine to produce grapes that are easy for us to harvest.
The weather forecast for next week is looking pretty wet. While we can use the rain, it would be nice to get our pruning done. We never work in the vineyard during rain storms because, if there is lightning that strikes the vineyards, the trellis wires will carry it throughout the vineyard and anyone in the vineyard could be electrocuted. And, if the vineyard gets really wet one day, it usually isn’t dry enough for several days to run heavy machinery over.
