Cold Spring

 So you'll notice the choice of words "cold" to describe the weather. Its been cold with May vomming in at about 11c average for the month and everything is delayed. An average May temperature is about 12.7c.

Bud break was about May 23-26 and this puts it at the latest weve ever experienced,  normal is around May 18-21.

With danger of any late frost having passed weve now completed the secondary pruning and we just need some heat now.

We are also moving from treated wooden posts to metal and weve now switched over 25% of the vineyard.

 

Vineyard Expansion Continues

So a few years back we began clearing more land to expand the vineyard. The piece of land next to the vineyard was full on forest land and took a few seasons to both clear the land and prepare for planting.

Clearing the land to use it for farming takes alot of work and again a big thank to to Crescent Bay Construction for the heavy work in clearing the trees. We took dozens of cords of wood off the land and more thanks to Shane Raymond. Here is the land clearing. see link

We burned up the residual (very dirty work) and then cleaned the land of large unburned stumps etc., and again a big thank you to Shane Raymond in helping with that. Burning is dirty work. see link

We been ploughing to prepare the land and the soil here is excellent silty/sand...so much different than in the rocky original test vineyard. Since then we've been planting new vines such as Leon Millot and Marquette, both reds. Also, one of the vines going in this area is Evangeline. This "made in Canada" grape is not available for purchase commercially so we've had to propegate our own. More info on Evangeline.

The last group of Evangeline are being propegated this year and will be planted in the fall of 2022 or spring of 2023. Alot of new vines in the ground from last fall and this spring in this new area and its nice to finally see it filling in.

Pruning and Planting

 May 1st and things are a bit behind this year with the weather. We usually have some small early leaves comming out on the trees last 2 weeks of April but just starting to see that now.

We have finished the 1st round of pruning to get rid of most of last years growth. But we still leave double the bud count just in case there is a late spring frost (remembering last year). Lots of bleeding from the vine as soon as you prune it.

Late May, we'll do a second prune to adjust bud count for proper crop load and do another adjustment to cluster prune in early July.

We also have some Marquette to plant and we will get those in the ground in the next few days.