Although it is hard to imagine, the weather so far has stayed relatively warm, making it possible to continue working in our vineyards. We are just about done removing Mulberry trees at Tassel Ridge Vineyard so we are shifting to other trellis maintenance tasks at Tassel Ridge. This week, we will also start pruning our Marquette. Next year, we will start the process of converting our VSP (vertical shoot positioning) trellis system in the Marquette vineyard over to High Wire. This involves training a new trunk that will grow up 65 inches to the top wire instead of only about 30 inches for the current system. We are doing this because research shows that the Marquette is healthier and more productive on a high wire system than on the VSP trellis. When we planted the Marquette in 2007, we’d been told by the vine supplier in Minnesota that VSP was the way to go. Later research showed that a high wire system was better for this variety. But, this conversion is a big job and it will be very time consuming so we’ll convert only a few rows at a time.
Weather Allows More Vineyard Maintenance Work
