Spring is sprung

Solaris 3-yo vines

There is so much to be done, and Alex has done half of the major work already. Half the new vines have been dug in. Unfortunately, I cant help much as I have a pinched nerve in my hand causing excruciating pain. The rain has ceased and we have dry but cooler than normal weather. Unfortunately, we also have too many things happening at once: book launches, health issues, holidays, volunteer commitments, lectures, incessant travel. We have work to do on the boat on the garden, on ourselves. Have we bitten off more than we can chew? (What a funny expression!)

Rondo just waking up

New chardonnay, freshly planted and budding

Building a vineyard

Earlier this week in Daria's Vineyard

Alex has been very busy planting fence posts in the field. He bought a trailer load on Monday and by Friday he had a good number of them planted. That's the hardest part of creating a vineyard. He is working very hard while the vines sit in clumps in the ground awaiting their day in the sun. 

The soil is curious. It has a clay in it that almost feels sandy. We really should have it analyzed to tell us what it is. But our philosophy is that if grapes love poor soil, then these grapes are sure to get it. Fortunately for Alex, the ground is quite soft now and the light NW winds are cooling us off as we work. 

I've been weeding and pruning the vegetable garden. 

Progress made by Friday

Grape vines have arrived

Bare rooted vines have arrived just as Alex was building the new fence around the field area we set aside for the chardonnay vines. So he quickly planted the chardonnay and started digging in fence posts for the rest, back breaking work. Luckily, he bought the fence posts just the day before yesterday.

The new vines are solaris like the first four we planted experimentally. They've done reasonably well. Alex thinks he had ordered 25 vines, but two bundles of 25 arrived. When we checked the order, we realized he had ordered the 50. That's a lot of holes to dig.

We will now be officially a vineyard with 54 solaris vines, 5 chardonnay and 6 reds. They are Vitis solaris FR60 on SO4 rootstock, clone 31 Op. Full details below.