The Baby Vines are Getting Big

We propegate our own vines from the existing vines in the vineyard. It takes a bit longer than ordering vines in from suppliers but kinda nice to know that all the vines come from the same plants. We also got stiffed by a supplier that went out of business after we provided our payment..which set us back a year. We blogged about the propegation a few years ago. See the links below...

I am Groot - growing baby grape vines

Baby vines ready to plant

There is another reason as well. The vines we grow have this amazing 12-18 inch root system that means they dont need much watering off the start compared to ones purchased that may have 6 inche roots.

This next section that we are filling in is a 2 acre piece and we have a small section left to plant. What you see here are more of the Marechal Foch vines starting thier 2nd year with the old vineyard in the distance. 

Weve got great soil here but its light and prone to erosion so we seed the white clover between every second row ...it is starting to take hold as well. This will help build and maintain the soil and chokes out other weeds. We rotate to the opposite rows after 3-4 years.

Winter - Spring - Summer in a Month

Never seen a start to the year like this one. Mid April we still had snow on the ground. Come May 1st we were about 7-10 days behind and the buds were barely hitting scale crack on some varieties. Come May 21, we were a week ahead and bud break occured in the 2 week period from May 1 to may 15.

Come June 10th we are in full bloom, about 2.5 weeks ahead of normal and the earliest bloom we've ever had. Previously, the earliest bloom was June 15/16 and iflook back to last year we were 8-10 days late in bloom which occured around July 8/9.

Here is the snow on April 10

And here is the grapes flowering June 10 , L'Acadie and Foch (bottom)