Last week, we got tractors fixed and ready for vineyard work. We will be ordering fertilizer, fungicide, and other chemicals. And, as soon as it dries out, we will start mechanical pruning.
Every day, after mechanical pruning, we will spray the vines we pruned with Spurshield®, a polymeric material that will seal off the pruning cuts and speed the vine’s healing process. We have not done this in the past and it looks like we have some grapevine trunk diseases at work in some vines in the vineyards.
Grapevine trunk diseases are a global problem and they start by reducing grape production and they end by killing vines. They are caused by a broad group of fungal infections that attack the vine’s woody tissues. They include Botryosphaeria, Eutypa, Diaporthe, esca, black foot, and Petri disease with new forms that continue to appear. The diseases are endemic in our vineyards and in the plants growing outside of our vineyards. Spraying Spurshield® just prevents them from getting into the vines through the pruning cuts.
When we identify a vine with a grapevine trunk disease, we must cut the vine off at the ground. If we are sure that the disease has not spread down into the roots, we can wait for suckers to emerge in the spring. We will train one or two of them up to the trellis wire and start over. These vines will produce grapes in the second year after they were cut back.
