Pruning time

Starting to look tidier

Staking the trunk until
it can stand on its own

We've had a couple of good weather days during which I managed to clear the grass from around the 3-year-old plants, as well as prune and stake the primary trunks and cordons. We had some damage in the last two storms. A few of the loose canes which I would have chosen as cordons had broken. They must have been whipping around in the wind. Some are doing exceedingly well while others are middling. This will be a telling year. In some cases, I couldn't tell which was the more vigorous trunk so I left two for now, but will select one out next year.

There are five plants missing which Alex has already ordered. Mostly Solaris. Casualties of the grass cutting, etc.

The first five Chardonnay vines are doing well but the other 25 are not looking as well. Some appear dead. We'll have to wait and see. I have to remember that it's their first year.

The Albarino vines look wonderful and the Pinot noir look pretty good but not as vigorous as the Albarino. There is not much to do with those two rows this year but clear.

3-year-old vines doing well

I sowed seeds of 'green manure' among the first ten plants although I did not prepare the soil/grass before sowing. I just wanted to introduce a little diversity into the grass which is quite thick up there but doesn't have much clover or other binding and nutrient gathering varieties mixed in. I will have to start digging up a few remaining docks plants and there are a few new rushes that I will have to dig out.

Today I will tackle the pruning of the ten mature vines. I am choosing the spur pruning method which is easier and I can readily visualise which spurs to maintain.  I believe that's how the Spanish and Portuguese prune theirs. I will train two main cordons from each trunk overhead and leave spurs with at least two buds on each. Let's get to it.

Oh, and in a final note, our vineyard has just expanded to include kiwis. Alex brought a particularly robust and tasty kiwi fruit home and planted the seeds which all came up. Now we probably have the only kiwi plantation in Ireland as well. The two plants we have trained on a south-facing wall in our garden is doing well but have not produced fruit. Not sure if we have both sexes represented.

Different pruning and training methods (Credit: Wine Folly)

Daria's Vineyard as of Jan 2020

One-year-old Albarino

One-year-old Pinot noir

Good weather prompts vineyard inspection

The extraordinarily mild weather this winter has given me pause. We had a few days of frost, but mostly it's been in the teens and many garden participants are starting to grow and sprout. I'm getting worried that the vines won't get a sufficient dormant period to recharge. I'm concerned that they may start to bud before I've had a chance to prune. We've had quite a lot of wind and a fair bit of rain. I heard on the radio this morning that our climate is definitely changing with ever-increasing amounts of annual rainfall.

So I took the opportunity today to begin pruning. I first tackled the known shoots that I wanted to remove from the first 10 mature vines - anything broken or damaged, anything growing from the main trunk below the level of the trellis, ensuring that there were at least two vigorous main cordons per stem. I stood observing the vines for a long time first to see what they were doing and how I could help.

The next step will be to prune the cordons to create spurs. I'll really take my time on that.

I will next walk the entire vineyard and select the main stems on the more newly planted vines. This year, I'll be selecting who gets to grow up to the trellis from among the shoots. We need a few replacement plants which Alex mowed down.

I do love this part. It forces you to really know your vines and commune with them.

No joy

We were away for several weeks during a period when we hoped there would be little vineyard work required. When we came home, we thought we'd see major progress. But disappointment came quickly. Not only did the vines not grow as much as everything else, especially the very robust weeds, but the grapes were also underdeveloped for the time of the season. The grapes we had seen in Spain more than a month ago were far more robust than ours were now. The flowers had set and there were grape buds, but I certainly wouldn't call them grapes.

The weather while we were gone was a healthy mix of rain and sun, so we were quite hopeful. The data from Met Eireann shows the same pattern as last year for July.  But it doesn't look like we'll get anything like a substantial harvest by mid-September. Perhaps there was not enough rain. Perhaps not enough heat. Perhaps the vines will produce for future generations. Who knows?

https://www.met.ie/climate/available-data/monthly-data

Flowering has begun

Flower clusters on Rondo vines

Well, May was a strange month. Much cooler than normal. Only 11.7°C degrees mean air temperature compared with the three prior years being about 13°C. And whereas it started out dryer, it ended wetter at 112.5 mm compared with 60-70 mm in the last three years. These values are reported for Newport, only 7 miles away and on the water much like we are.  

Spring work is nearing completion

Alex has almost completed the overhead pergola construction under the first 10 vines that reach 5 years of age this year. A few days ago, he cemented in the major support posts. On Saturday, he installed the cross poles. Very elegantly bent to shape so the tractor-that-we-do-not-yet-have can get around the corner.

Spring has finally arrived

Rondo is most advanced

After weeks of cold dry weather, a few days of sprinkles was followed by a week of fine warm weather over Easter. Finally, the vines were ready to burst forth. All have done so now. The five-year-old Rondo and Solaris vines have leafed. The two-year-old Solaris vines have leafed. The Chardonnays are just beginning. The Pinot and Albariño vines have started leafing, too. There is life in the vineyard, and the donkeys are back in the field next door. Alex is preparing to erect the first of the overhead trellises and he has bought a gate wide enough to drive a tractor through. Thinking ahead.

Pollinators and grapes

The headlines last month were dire. "Plummeting insect numbers 'threaten collapse of nature'" warned The Guardian. "The rate of insect extinction is eight times faster than that of mammals, birds, and reptiles." That is such a definitive and frightening statement. 

The analysis of 73 historical reports, published in the journal Biological Conservation, concludes that intensive agriculture is the main driver of the declines, particularly the heavy use of pesticides.  They provide a few highlights of the exhaustive analysis:

Highlights

• Over 40% of insect species are threatened with extinction.
• Lepidoptera, Hymenoptera and dung beetles (Coleoptera) are the taxa most affected.
• Four aquatic taxa are imperiled and have already lost a large proportion of species.
• Habitat loss by conversion to intensive agriculture is the main driver of the declines.
• Agro-chemical pollutants, invasive species and climate change are additional causes.

Cover crops and companion plants

A vineyard with cover crop between rows.

My last post dealt with underground fungi that form symbiotic relationships with grapevines. Today, I'm investigating cover crops and companion plants that can be grown with the vines to help promote healthy soil structure and nutrient exchange and perhaps even protect against insects and disease. Cover crops have been used for millennia and are becoming more popular again with the advent of organic farming and the desire to reduce the use of pesticides and herbicides.

Grapevines in partnership with fungi

I've been reading a fascinating book called Mycophilia by food writer and cookbook author Eugenia Bone. She stoked my interest in everything mushroom. I have been most interested in the symbiotic relationship between underground mycorrhizal fungi and photosynthetic plants above ground. Some fungi serve to remove and clean-up diseased and dying plants. Others have symbiotic relationships with specific plants they tend to. Their root systems get intertwined, the plants delivering sugars to the fungi, the fungi extracting minerals from the soil and delivering them to the roots of plants.

Pruning into the New Year

After the pruning

Alex pruning the Rondo vines

I'll be staying with my niece in January to help out after the birth of her second child so we took the opportunity to prune the vines today. It was a fine dry day and mild, too. We've had a high pressure centered over Ireland for about a week now and it's been very gray but dry and uncharacteristically mild. The weeks before were drenched by torrential rains. The land was flooded all around us. Lucky for us, our land is sloping. The roses have not ceased blooming, the grass is growing and many plants are budding due to the mild weather. We may even have a New Year's daffodil. I was worried that the grapevines might not be dormant, but they did seem to be.

The Rondo and Solaris vines are doing well and are quite robust except one Rondo. They took severe pruning. The chardonnay vines are looking very nice and were easy to prune and stake.

The one-year-old Solaris vines were very easy to prune. Two of the 50 had been cut by the strimmer when Alex last cut the grass. Two others looked possibly dead. One was missing. So Alex will order five to replace those. The vines were inconsistent in growth. Some were quite long while others remained very small. Could be due to the dry summer.

We've decided to complete the row that has the chardonnay test vines with more test vines. Alex wants red, but I don't want Rondo, so we're looking for short season reds to try. My money is on Pinot Noir, but we'll see. He has also ordered Albariño vines to plant on another section of field. The plantation expands.

Another season comes to a close. Happy New Year to all.




From GuildSomm 

Controlling the fungus among us

Image from Wikimedia Commons

We have always wondered why there are rose bushes planted at the ends of rows in vineyards. Now that we have a vineyard, it prompted us to look into it. And what we learned makes sense. Roses and grapes are both susceptible to some of the same fungal diseases, namely powdery mildew and downy mildew. Roses, in fact, act as an early warning signal for mildew. They help the vintner catch the diseases at an early stage so proper treatment can be applied. In other words, they help to control the fungus among us. I also came across a curious alt truth story from Australia.

Wake up!

More robust but still wound up tightly. 

Oh oh oh, almost. It's trying. 

Every day, I go to the vineyard to see if the vines have awoken yet. The weather has been uncooperative. Cooler and wetter than normal, and we even had a light ground frost this morning. Every day, the buds open ever so slightly, almost imperceptibly. The orchard is in bloom for the most part, the asparagus and rhubarb are harvestable, but the vines are still asleep. Any day now.

Until then, I continue digging up weeds, mostly ginormous docks roots, but a few other species as well, including prickly thistles. Every day, there are new ones adjacent to where I dug some out the day before. I feel like Sisyphus, only driven to cleanse the land. But I leave the dandelions to attract the pollinators and will be planting other Gaia-friendly companion species. And I watched a ladybird climb up a blade of grass and fly off into the sun. I just know that one day, I'll turn around and there it will be - the first leaf. Oh the joy of small pleasures.

Even the new plantings are straining.
Or are they restraining against the cold?

Still sleeping

The vines are still asleep. I've been digging up docks daily - two buckets full of roots is my limit per day before my back is irreparably damaged. But I am making progress. The ground is very soft and my new shovel makes the work manageable. Alex gave me a beautifully crafted Harmony shovel for my birthday. Some may have thought he was crazy, but my favourite shovel had cracked and this one is a delight -- if digging docks can be delightful. It's actually a kind of zen experience. Maybe a bit of OCD -- I have to dig up every one in the vineyard so they don't compete with the grapes for nutrients. Their root systems are so massive. (I have to remember to order soil test kits.)

It's been the longest winter on record in distant memory. Farmers are desperate, importing feed from overseas to feed hungry cattle and sheep. The fields are too wet for the cattle to be let out and the temperature too low to enable grass to grow. It's been too cold for newborn lambs to be left outside. I feel for those farmers.

Pruning the grapevines

What a mess!

The job was daunting. We'd been gone most of the summer sailing, which isn't prudent when you are trying to start a vineyard, but hey it's all an adventure isn't it? Meanwhile, the weather had been mild and moist until last week when we finally had a cold snap. Frost, sleet, hail and snow finally put the vines to sleep and they dropped their leaves so we could see the structure of the vines themselves. And what we saw was not pretty. I kept going up there and coming back down without having done a thing.

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.

Dormant season

This week we had a cold snap. Ground frost and freezing fog turned the landscape into Narnia. The water froze solid in the containers the cats drink from and the glass in the cold frame was covered in gorgeous crystal patterns. So I went into the vineyard to see if it was time to prune the grapevines.

Interesting!  The red grape vines had dropped all their leaves, but the white grape vines were holding on tightly. Still fully leafed. So "not yet" was the answer.

I raked the leaves from the lawn instead. The trouble with planting deciduous trees is that they drop their leaves and make work. I think I'll go for more evergreen from now on.

NEW Wine for Seniors

NEW Wine for Seniors 

A glass before bed could assist with a good night's sleep.

Clare Valley vintners in South Australia,
which primarily produce
Pinot Blanc, Pinot Noir, and Pinot Grigio wines,
have developed a new hybrid grape
that acts as an anti-diuretic.
It is expected to reduce the number of trips
older people have to make to the
bathroom during the night.

The new wine will be
marketed as PINOT MORE.

Sorry, my cousin thought I deserved this so I'm spreading the news!  

Picking the grape varieties. Viti-culture

When I titled this picking the grapes, I didn't mean the fruit itself.  I meant the vines. You have to start somewhere. I am happy to say that the vines we chose -- well Alex selected -- are alive and actually growing. That's a good first step, I suppose. This is after all agriculture, and we know how intelligent it is to get into that with climate change around the corner.

As you can see, we are not especially pedantic about keeping the grapes weed free. Here's another one of my hair brained theories. Grapevines evolved into vines because they were growing in crowded conditions. In their native territory, they climbed trees to reach the sun where their fruits could ripen. No wonder they like poor soil. Well, if that's the case, then clearing everything around them will keep them short and fat, rather than reaching for the sun. Let them have a little competition if that's what they like, I say.

The grape is a particularly interesting specimen. There is only one species, Vitis vinifera, and hundreds of cultivars that are grown in different regions and largely responsible for the rich variations in the resultant wines. The grapevine varieties we picked are Rondo for red and Solaris for white, both on SO4 stock. These are cultivars that are supposed to do well in Ireland outside without polytunnels. So far so good.

The vines are grafted onto SO4, the rootstock of Vitis berlandieri, a native of North America, which is particularly resistant to phylloxera -- the disease that almost killed off the great vineyards of Europe -- and lime, which is a major component of the soils of France where grapes were grown.  Generally, grapes like acid soil. I was about to mulch them with pine needles but now I am not so certain. Better read up on SO4 first.

I look at this as the year of getting to know each other. The growth cycle of grapevines is an annual process beginning with bud break in the spring and culminating in leaf fall in autumn followed by winter dormancy. The stages of the annual growth cycle usually become observable within the first year of a vine's life. The amount of time spent at each stage of the growth cycle depends on a number of factors, most notably the type of climate and the characteristics of the grape variety. This is our introduction to viticulture. And it is the grapevine's introduction to how much we will do to support its development. 

From a winemaking or viniculture perspective, each step in the process plays a vital role in the development of grapes with the ideal characteristics for the making of a wine. Some things are good. Others are bad. Viticulturalists  monitor the effects of climate, disease and pestilence in facilitating or impeding the vines progression from bud break, flowering, fruit set, veraison, harvesting, leaf fall and dormancy. Human nature is to control all of the above, reacting to situations with the use of viticultural practices that we have yet to learn -- like canopy management, irrigation, vine training and the use of agrochemicals.

How far we are willing to take it remains to be seen.  At least our grapevines are visible from a distance in the field now. That's a good baby step.

Welcome to Daria's Vineyard.