With the deep cold we experienced this past winter...-27c...we were unsure how the vines would be budding out this year, if not trunk damage or how many live buds we would have.
We delayed pruning till we could see whats going on and we are seeing buds push now and while there is damage, in general, things are looking good. Still some time to go to determine if weve lost primary buds and flowers but we will know better by end of May.
For now we can say our commercial varieties look pretty good. We had originally been planning for -25c to -30c lows and chose vines that were supposed to be hardy to those lows.
For Reds...Marechal Foch, Leon Millot, Marquette, GR7 look pretty good so far. Castel is showing the most damage but still not too bad. Foch below;
The L'Acadie and Evangeline look good. Some L'Acadie have damage but thise appear on vines in a few pockets that were stressed due to magnesium deficiency in our sandy soil. Evangeline is late budding so we still are not 100% sure but again they look good so far as well. L'Acadie below;
So overall things look good so far. Still waiting till they leaf out to confirm primary buds and flowers and get past any late season frosts but if all else is normal we should have a fairly normal crop too. Of interest is the other non-commercial vines we have that are showing well with low apparent damage and pushing buds after the nasty cold snap.
Reds: Triompe D'Alsace, Colmar Precose Noir, Lucy Kuhlman, St. Croix, Marechal Joffre...all looking good.
Whites: Petite Milo, Vandal Cliche, Ravat 34...also all looking good.