Buds are growing

It was another beautiful day and I spent some time transplanting seedlings and preparing trays for more seeds to be started. 

I then took a walk to the shed and across to the vineyard where I hadn't been for a couple of weeks. The earth is quite squidgy but Alex has put down seaweed as fertilizer. I pulled grass and weeds and rushes from the vines. Behold, the grapevines' buds are swelling already. I read today that the cherry blossoms in Japan are blooming a full month earlier than normal due to a warm spell. I wonder if we will notice a difference with bud break?

Rondo

Solaris

Chardonnay

Pinot Noir

Young Solaris

Squidgy earth, but the grass needs cutting already.

Seaweed at the base of the vines. 

Croagh Patrick imposing as always.

My Irish gate. 

Warning!

Apple tree bud break. 

Wine marketing 101: 19 Crimes

Someone gave us a bottle of 19 Crimes Red. It was awful. We couldn't drink it, so we used it to make beef stew. We have since received multiple bottles from friends but have never bought it. Each time it was relegated to cooking duty. How could people buy something that was so utterly awful? Clearly, they must not have tasted it themselves or they really don't appreciate wine. 

I was intrigued by the name and how it suddenly became popular out of nowhere. But I never looked it up until yesterday. OMG, it turns out that all the wine connoisseurs pooh-pooh 19 Crimes. Yet, it sells a ton of bottles and grew quickly. 

The brand turns out to be a stroke of marketing genius. The name itself, 19 Crimes, refers to the crimes committed in the UK that would relegate the perpetrators to a one-way trip to Australia. There are 19 corks each with a crime that are assigned randomly to the bottles across the range. Which one will you find today?

As it turns out, the wine is targeted at young men who don't really know anything about wine but are attracted to the somewhat risque concept of petty crime. Given that I know something about marketing having done it for most of my career on Madison Avenue, I find this fascinating. 

From the website...

"Punishment by Transportation

Between 1788 and 1868, 165,000 convicts made the long voyage by sea to Australia. Times were tough for criminals, but these individuals were tougher. They survived the boat ride and the exile. Now their stories survive into the 21st century with 19 Crimes."

They promote polyamorous relationships and nonconventional behaviour. They target Gen Z and Millenials. They challenge you to 'break convention'.

They don't tell you who the producer is, and they don't say much about what makes up the red. They do say that the origin is Australia. So there you go, one of the ancestors, or more, of those transported to Australia as criminals has come up with a unique concept that appeals to young blokes all over. 

And they use Snoop Dog and Martha Stewart as celebrity promoters. Brilliant. Just slightly shady. 

"Our red blend bears the same traits as those banished to Australia. Defiant by nature, bold in character. Always uncompromising. It's a taste you'll never forget."

You bet I won't forget. 

Good case study. 

Why young vines are dying

 

A new French film explores how techniques for propagating and growing vines prescribed by the French government has been resulting in loss of biodiversity and longevity in viticulture. Furthermore, poor pruning practices are reducing the resilience of vines to climate change. Bad grafting technique causes weakness in vines and using limited types of rootstock contributes as well. 

Well, with all of this controversy, which I can see is what happens with agriculture in general when the government prescribes unproven methods that must be adhered to when applying for grants, I'm really glad we are doing it our way. 

It seems that the old-style whip and tongue graft is far superior to the omega graft propagated by Germans who developed an instrument that I bought for Alex when his grafts kept failing. 

It also seems that the pruning of vines to very short stubs promotes the development of ESCA, a disease of the trunk that is causing vines to die. Training systems with long arms (or cordons) were generally less affected by the disease than those with short or no arms. Pruning also played a major role, with a trend of less severe symptoms associated with less pruning. Scientists who conducted a ten-year study concluded that simplification of the woody vine structure (resulting from the adoption of modern training and pruning options) may have favoured the development of ESCA.

Case in point, the more man interferes with nature, the more it suffers. LITFA. My new mantra. Care to guess what it stands for?

Bud break in the polytunnel

Vanessa has started to unfurl her leaves in the polytunnel. It's so exciting. In 2022, bud break took place on 4 March. That's two weeks later than this year. I can't find a reference to bud break in 2023. January was the warmest January on record continuing the trend of warmest months on record. 

The apple tree in the polytunnel has also started leafing. Unfortunately, I can't find a reference to when it leafed last year. I'll have to keep better tabs on this stuff as climate change accelerates. 

It was a beautifully sunny day, so we washed the cars. It was much needed. 

I am busily starting seeds for our vegetable and flower gardens and I am really pleased with the system I have put in place. I start the seeds on warming mats in the greenhouse, then transplant them into small pots and move the seedlings into the plastic greenhouse inside the polytunnel to grow. Then I plant them out into the polytunnel beds or into bigger pots for the outdoor beds, which I harden off in the polytunnel. 

 

So happy with our Solar PV

Our solar PV array on our shed

We've had solar PV for a couple of weeks now and we are totally addicted to keeping an eye on how much we are using, how much we are generating, how much we are storing, and how much we are selling into the grid. It's totally fascinating. We now have access to all the information we need to use our electricity smartly. 

The app by Hwawei for their system (yes we installed a Chinese system) is quite sophisticated. The home screen shows where electricity is moving from and to graphically. You can see how much is being generated, how much is being stored in the battery, how much is being used in the house, and how much is being taken from the grid. There's a two-minute delay for the app to pick it up so we can basically see exactly what's contributing to the usage on most counts. The baseline usage is too much, but we have two fridge freezers and two freezers, plus bloody pumps for water and sewage that run too often.

Click on the battery in the app and you can see how full it is, and what is supplying it as well as daily charge and discharge, Click on statistics and you see daily, monthly, yearly, and lifetime stats. The chart at the bottom shows minute-by-minute energy use and generation which you can view in full screen. You can overlay charged from the PV, discharged from the battery, direct use of PV, and direct use of energy supplied by the supplier, for us Energia. With our recent Smart Metre installation, we switched to a Smart Plan. We pay €0.1917 for night rates (11pm to 8 am), 0.3579 for day rates (8 am to 5 pm, and 7 pm to 11 pm), and 0.3751 for peak rates (5-7pm). We get paid 0.24 per kWh for anything that goes into the grid. And when we get an eV, we can get a reduced charging rate of 8.15c per kWh PLUS the longest charging window on the market from 2am to 6am with Energia’s Smart Drive tariff. 

We have set the system to charge the battery at 12-2 am at the night rate. I do at least one or two loads of laundry at 2-4 am with our new washer and dryer a couple of times a week which can be set to delay the cycle. The night charge on the battery carries us through morning showers and breakfast when the PVs start to kick in on most days. The battery recharges with PV during the day and the PV/battery covers most daily activities, even in February. If we run the dishwasher or washer during the day, we use some from each source. 

We noticed that when we turned on the heat in the winery, that heater was using quite a bit of electricity so we turned it off during the day and turned it on at night for a project Alex was doing. Having the heat on round the clock to maintain 22-24C during fermentation was expensive last year. The insulation maintains the temperature in the winery during the day reasonably well, so perhaps we will moderate our use this year. It's all hugely valuable information we did not have access to before. 

It's taking a bit of experimentation to balance out our use and optimise the system. The things we've found that use the most electricity are:

• Water heater (scary amount)
• Water pump (scary amount)
• Kettle (also scary amount)
• Oven
• Dryer
• Washer
• Dishwasher
• Microwave
• Fridge/freezers
• Sander/saw

Computers, TV and lights are minimal in comparison. That surprised me as I was always such a stickler for turning off the lights. It's taking a bit of time to see how each cycle draws and what is most efficient to choose.

That was just the PV system app. We also get data from esb Networks and Energia. The esb data is a week at a time and a week old so it's not as useful. The Energia tools are much more useful and the newest one presents daily figures. So you know if yesterday was high and you did laundry, that's what accounted for it. 

esb Networks consumption and microgeneration

The Energia basic compares monthly and other similar homes

It now also breaks down Smart Plan usage: day, night and peak

The new tool gives you up-to-date consumption and cost. 

All in all, we are very pleased with the result. 

Snowing in Mayo

Awoke to snow falling gently, silently onto the garden. We were supposed to have wind in the range of 30 knots but so far that has not materialised. It is very cold and supposed to stay that way for several days. Hopefully, that will put a damper on some garden pests this year. 

I've started some seeds in the greenhouse and Alex is rooting vines in the polytunnel. Hopefully, we'll have enough to replace the vines we lost last year. Alex also bought a handy new book that has loads of practical advice for growing vines in our climate.

Viticulture - 2nd Edition: An introduction to commercial grape growing for wine production Paperback – 19 Nov. 2019

by Mr Stephen Skelton MW (Author)

4.6 4.6 out of 5 stars    116 ratings

The vineyard carbon sink

An important article was just published that shows regenerative practices increase carbon sequestration in soil. It was a literature analysis and essentially a review paper, but it indicates that regeneration practices, especially in woody agricultural projects like vineyards and orchards, can increase carbon sequestration. 

"Applying animal integration, non-chemical pest management, diverse cover crops, agroforestry, non-chemical fertilizer, and redesigning the system at the landscape level can all contribute to this species richness. Research is also emerging on the greater resilience to climate change of perennial plant communities with high species diversity, due to the greater probability of including species with traits adapted to climate change.

This finding is particularly relevant for viticulture, which has been identified as a potential carbon sink, and indicates the importance of adopting regenerative practices to enhance carbon uptake."

Frontiers | Quantifying soil carbon sequestration from regenerative agricultural practices in crops and vineyards (frontiersin.org)

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fsufs.2023.1234108/full?fbclid=IwAR1LveHuETr17tjrMWIQOAISp8rNHMOIpbgG3uabQSROone23FdyaJwK4Xo