Newsletter Volume III, Issue 2 (June 2005)
| Welcome Welcome to the June 2005 issue of our newsletter! It has taken me a lot longer to get this issue of the newsletter out. Thanks for your patience! I have been busy maintaining this website and a couple others. It’s been a busy spring. Newsletter Contents  |
| What’s New Well alot has taken place since the last newsletter was sent out! It’s been a busy spring in the vineyard. We have replaced some vines, added some new ones and completely shut down our Hudson, WI vineyard. There were about 18 vines to be rescued from the Hudson vineyard. 6 Prairie Stars, 6 Frontenacs, 3 Valiants and 3 Sabrevois. We transplanted most of them to our Lake Elmo, MN location, and also gave away a few vines to a friend that wanted to try growing some. Altogether we now have 36 vines in the vineyard with room for a few more. Â |
| Spring Recap The vineyard has come through a strange spring in good shape. We had several days in the 70’s and one day in the low 80’s in April. With that, many of the vines began pushing their buds. I especially noticed some leaves showing on the Foch - this had me worried as it was only early May and we typically have a risk of frost until about the third week of May. So sure enough, we hit 27F on one night. The next week, I pruned the Foch. Then we hit 25F a few days later and a bunch of the Foch buds got nipped. During this same timeframe, the Valiant had begun budswell and the Frontenac and Prairie Star hadn’t budged. So far most of the vines have recovered pretty well. The Valiant, Frontenac and Prairie Star don’t have much in the way of visible damage - a few Valiant vines have a couple of deformed leaves. But the newest leaves and shoots look just fine. The Foch all needed to be pruned down to the ground to start new trunks. They didn’t suffer winter damage, but all of their buds were toast as a result of the early May frost. In the last week, we have added some mulch to the vines, fertilized them with a slow-release, granular fertilizer in a 10-10-10 formulation. We also put grow tubes on some of the newest vines and a few of the Foch that got hit by this spring’s hard frost. On recent trips through the vineyard, we noticed a bit of deer nibbling so we also ran some monofilament around the perimeter of the vineyard at about chest height to a whitetail. We had good luck with this last season. |
| Vineyard Status Valiant - The Valiants came through the winter in stellar condition. We are set to get our first decent crop from them this season. A few of the vines have well over 60 clusters on them and will need to be thinned down a bit. One of them is dead from a crazy gopher. Another one appeared to have suffered the same gopher-induced fate, but just today I noticed that it’s buds have swelled noticeably in the last few days. Somehow enough root survived to deliver sap into the plant - at least that’s my theory. Check back for updates on this vine. We also transplanted one Valiant vine from our Hudson, WI vineyard and it is doing just fine. Prairie Star - We had one lone survivor from the original Prairie Stars we planted and were able to nurse it along last season. We supplemented that with 5 transplants from our Hudson, WI vineyard. Four of the five transplants have taken off and are doing well. So right now we have 5 healthy Prairie Stars and feel confident that these ones will make it. Frontenac - Similar to the Valiants, the Frontenacs came through the winter extremely well. They experienced no damage - despite the late frosts. These vines held their buds shut just long enough to avoid the cold. We plan to begin training the Fronts to a VSP system in order to achieve better ripening and lower acids at harvest. The folks at Great River Vineyard have had good luck with this - http://www.greatrivervineyard.com. Marechal Foch - The Foch overwintered great - despite a lack of snowcover and extended periods of cold weather with temps down to -25F. Our biggest problem with the Foch this spring (and likely every season) was that they seem to break bud rather early and they got hit by our hard frosts in early May. Right now, 9 of the 12 Foch vines have leafed out - we will wait and see if the other three will push buds anytime soon. If our Foch ultimately prove unworthy from a cold-hardiness standpoint we will come up with a plan to replace one row of them with Frontenac and the other with something like Sabrevois or maybe MN 1211. Sabrevois - The Sabrevois seem to have done well over the winter. Our hope this season is to finally get them to take hold and build their trunks. Check back for updates. Thanks! Thanks for taking the time to read our newsletter! We don’t pretend to be experts at growing grapes in cold climates, but rather we hope you find the newsletter an informative and entertaining source of information. If you do, feel free to forward the e-mail to others that may be interested. If you have suggestions for future topics or general comments/suggestions, feel free to send us a note using our Contact Us page. Our next newsletter should arrive in your inbox sometime soon. In the meantime, thanks for reading and take care! Don’t forget to tell your friends about our newsletter! |
Grapelog » Newsletter Archive Said,
September 16, 2006 @ 2:13 am
[…] 2006 Issues Volume IV, Issue 2 - May 2006 Volume IV, Issue 1 - April 2006 2005 Issues Volume III, Issue 3 - September 2005 Volume III, Issue 2 - June 2005 Volume III, Issue 1 - February 2005 2004 Issues Volume II, Issue 6- December 2004 Volume II, Issue 5 - October 2004 Volume II, Issue 4 - July 2004 Volume II, Issue 3 - June 2004 Volume II, Issue 2 - April 2004 Volume II, Issue 1 - February 2004 2003 Issues Volume I, Issue 6 - December 2003 Volume I, Issue 5 - November 2003 Volume I, Issue 4 - Summer 2003 Volume I, Issue 2 - June 2003 Volume I, Issue 1 - May 2003 Â Â Â Â Â […]