So its been a cool May again, like 2020 but colder, and with frost and the vines have been slower to leaf out but they are coming along. We had a week of warm weather starting the end of may into June and that really brought the vines growing. The L'Acadie Blanc was among the earliest to bud out and leaf out which is rather remarkable as in years gone by they are no earlier than other varieties. Photo from June 5th. L'Acadie also suffered some frost damage, but about the same as the other varieties.
It may be that L'Acadie have the propensity to bud out in soil temperatures that are a bit cooler than the other varieties and with the cool May, the soil has stayed a bit cooler than usual - slowing the budding of other varieties like Marechal Foch and Petite Milo but yet warm enough to start the L'Acadie to push buds.
Just 1 or 2 degrees in soil temperature can make the difference. Several years back we had dozens of Leon Millot plants potted that were dormant and on shelves stored for the winter in our machine shed. In the spring as the temperature warmed up the vines on the top self at about 6' high started to push buds while none of the vines on the bottom shelf were showing any signs of pushing buds. It was quite remarkable to see as there was only a few degrees difference in the temperature from 1' off the ground to 6' off the ground on the shelves, but enough to warm the soil enough to get the top vines active.
Regardless we are in June now and all varieties are leafed out and catching up to L'Acadie. At this point we can start to gauge the crop potential based on the flower clusters observed.
But this is just speculation, we really wont get a solid picture of what the crop may be until early-mid July which is after flowering and fruit set.
