Another Spray..Another Day

Sprayed Mancozeb and Sulfur

New to this North Carolina Vineyard Blog

I have just added a new gadget to my blog so that you can keep up with the temperatures in the vineyard. Check along the right side of the webpage and see the today's weather plus the weather for the next three days. Just another way to follow along with us.

Week of April 19

Here is a run down of the Week of April 19:

Monday April 19
Sprayed Merlot/Cab Sauv=Mancozeb/Sulfur
Sprayed Niagara/Muscat=Mancoceb
Cab Sauv 100% Popped

Wednesday April 21
Cab Sauv/Niagara/Muscat=Applied 10-14-10
Finished debudding Merlot

10-14-10

We applied 10-14-10 fertilizer around the newly popped Merlot plants today. We applied 5 oz around the baso of the plant on the ground. This vineyard mixture will allow the vines to get all the nutrients that it is missing this year. This is our third year using this and I have to say I have seen great results with it.

Spray...Spray...Spray

Today we sprayed:

Mancozeb Flowable on Niagara and Muscat
Sulfur and Mancozeb Flowable on Merlot

Cab Sauv still has not popped.

It just missed us.

Over the past two nights we have had temps in the mid to upper 30's which brought a very kind frost. It the temps would have dropped a couple of degrees we could have had a big problem because 80% of our Merlot's have popped. We got lucky nothing was damaged.

POP!!

Well our Merlot buds are starting to POP. It is mostly the younger shoots and plants that are popping. I am seeing about 30% that have popped so far. This is a result of the 80+ degree days here in North Carolina. I think we have now gone almost 6 days with temperatures in the 80+ and even low 90's. Thank goodness the snow is gone.

Signs of Spring

Alright as I type this my wife looks over my shoulder at the pictures and says, "What is so interesting about those twigs?" I just laugh because to me this is the first sign of spring in the vineyard.

This is the time of year that the early riping grape buds start to swell and the freshly cut vines start to bleed. Last year all the buds had popped by April 4 on the Merlot and April12 on the Cab Sauv. It is now April 5 and just the Merlot buds have started to swell and not pop. This is a good thing though, we don't want the buds to pop to soon because we run a greater risk of having frost in the early part of April (Remember the 2007 Easter Freeze April 5-7).

There are several reasons why the Merlots are popping later this year than last. One is they are older and older vines take a little longer to wake up, second is the cold winter we had and the vines sleep when it is cold outside and last is we finished pruning the Merlot vines later in the year.