7/8/24
Sangiovese shows 22.1 brix. Seeds are mostly brown at this point. PH reading is 3.2. Juice tastes sweet.
7/7/24
I built a punchdown tool out of stainless steel from stuff I cobbled together from Amazon.
7/4/24
Brix sample shows Sangiovese at 21 brix. This is higher than expected. There’s a hurricane blowing through next week so that might delay ripening a bit
7/1/24
Sprayed 2oz of Tebustar. I think this is my last spray pre harvest. I see 4 or 5 vines that look like they have Pierce’s Disease. I see a lot of shot berries in the vineyard in general. Sangiovese on the West side looks great. I irrigated yesterday for the first time this summer.
6/27/24
Crushed some Sangiovese grapes and the refractometer says they’re 17.8 brix. We will pick them somewhere between 24 and 26.
6/21/24
I am not doing a good job keeping the birds out…
6/18/24
Veraison going strong on Sangiovese. Around 40%. A berry or two on Montepulcianno. Barely started on barbera. None in the merlot.
6/15/24
Sprayed 10oz or captan. 2oz of Tebustar. Battery was dead on spray rig so just sprayed with no fan.
6/1/24
Sprayed 10oz of captan. The revised spray rig made this so much easier. I had enough spray left over to spray 3-4 rows again. The sprayer arm needs something to keep it more inline with the fan but even so it was spraying well. I sprayed so soon since the last spray because last time I did a piss poor job and we’ve had almost 4 inches of rain in the last 2 days.
5/30/24
Seeing some concerning leaf damage that looks like Pierce’s disease. Laid out sticky traps and sprayed 10 oz of macho in the root zone with the spray rig. Realized near the end for some reason the boom hose was leaking the whole time so I couldn’t really measure what I laid down. I set up the fertilizer injection and irrigated an hour with another 10 oz just to make sure I had good coverage. We shall see what the traps catch. Hopefully no sharp shooters.
5/28/24
5/24/24
Sprayed 10 oz of captan and 1 oz of rally. Sprayer was a pain. I need to fix that thing up. Stumps are all ground out now so I can actually go up and down all of the rows.
Finished up the deer fence gate. I went with a shower curtain design.
5/14/24
5/11/24
Sprayed 24oz of manzate and 2oz of Telstar with the new homemade airblast sprayer. Sprayer worked well but it’s unwieldy in the vineyard. Need to rework it. Still better than spraying with the wand by a large margin.
5/02/24
Sprayed 24oz of manzate and 2oz of Telstar with the new homemade airblast sprayer. Sprayer worked well but it’s unwieldy in the vineyard. Need to rework it. Still better than spraying with the wand by a large margin.
4/30/24
Sprayed 1# of manzate in 30 gallons of water Made it all the way to the last row and ran out. Rain expected the next few days.
4/27/24
Sprayed 11oz of ferrilene mixed in 25 gallons of water. Made a run through the vineyard with it making a wide band and had a lot left over. Set the sprayer to wide open and went up and down the rows spraying a lazy narrow band until it was through. It’s misting. Hope that Captan works.
Seeing some rust like stuff on leaves. Not sure what this is.
4/26/24
Fruit set in various spots In the vineyard. Can’t really say any variety is farther along that others. Sangiovese seems to be ahead. Montepulcianno is late. Montepulcianno has a ton of flowers considering the leaf growth isn’t that great. Seems like that is out of balance to me. In hindsight this was out of balance. The vines that had so much fruit didn’t ripen consistently.
4/24/24
Sprayed 1# captan 80 and 2 oz of rally. It took 2 tanks of water to spray it all. This time I mixed the tanks with a drill and a mixing wand. I sprayed Captan because the Manzate I ordered hasn’t shown up.
Sprayed both sides of the cordon wire. Came back and sprayed both sides of canopy. Took 2 hours. Spraying is becoming time consuming and I need to get an airblast sprayer working. This dosage of Captan and Rally was about 2x what a 1/4 vineyard requires. We are expecting 10 days of rain and I hope this gets me through. Still seeing some black rot infection but it’s much better than it has been. Seeing some chlorosis and some some red leaves on the Montepulciano. Ferrilene ordered.
4/17/24
Thinned shoots and cleaned up everything not growing straight. Sprayed 1# of manzate and 1oz of Rally.
4/11/24
We had a decent hailstorm yesterday with some half dollar sized hail. Noticed some hail damage today but not nearly as much as I expected. Just a few leaves in the rows.
4/7/24
Sprayed manzate. 8 oz to 25 gallons. Rain the next 2 days. I’ve been removing infected leaves every day.
4/3/24
4/2/24
Noticed some black rot infected leaves. Walked the vineyard removing any I saw. Hope I wasn’t too late on spraying. Ordered Rally funcgicide to clean this up.
4/1/24
Sprayed the vineyard again. This time I didn’t use the mix on exit tank and just mixed it in the big tank. 8oz to 12 gallons of water. Used about 2/3 of the tank. Worked 10x as well as using the mix on exit tank. Much higher pressure. I feel like I really got good coverage. This is the first time I’ve sprayed it correctly so let’s hope I’m not too late to stop black rot. It’s supposed to rain tonight. 6 hours of time until it’s rainfast.
3/26/24
Sprayed vineyard with manzate. 16 oz mixed in the spray mixer. I Didn’t use much of it. Had the mix setting all the way up at 7.
Installed remaining supports post bases on North and West deer fence.
3/6/2024
Grafted 20 or so vines that didn’t survive planting that I replanted 1103p rootstock last year. Also went around and cut buds off of trunks with a razor blade so they won’t sucker all year. In hindsight I did this too early and didn’t have great results. There wasn’t great sap flow in the vines and you need that to graft. I feel like how I grafted was ok it was just too early.
3/28/24
I wrapped up most of the deer fence today. We’re using 8 feet tall Tanax plastic fencing.
3/4/24
Pruned everything
3/3/24
Bud break and a stroll with Ricki
2/19/24
Worked on trellis and sprayed rows for first time this year. Mowed rows. Lots of grass already. Pulled all of last years canopy out of the catch wires. It looks a few hours to remove it all. Left the brush in the rows to be mulched by the tractor. I should not have done that because that’s where black rot hides. Next year I will burn it all.
1/20/24
Took a hedger down the rows and cut all of the vines above the first catch wire. Took cuttings from all of the varieties so I can graft them on the rootstocks I have planted as replacement vines. I put the cuttings in wet sawdust and put them in the fridge.
1/6/2024
Spreaded one shovel of dairy compost around all of the vines. In hindsight I should not have used dairy compost as it can contain herbicide. I did not end up with any damage but will use biochar compost from now on.
6/05/2023
Almost all of the sangiovese vines are showing black rot. Various other vines throughout the vineyard also showing spots. Sprayed all vines showing symptoms with immunox
05/29/2023
Growth has been good but there is a lot of chlorosis and what I think is black rot. I have a fertigation setup in place now so I can put ferrilene or other things in a bucket and it will be sucked up into the irrigation stream. Today I applied 2 pounds of ferrilene and it was applied using drip but also I sprayed a band under all of the rows using a water hose and a sprayer. We will see in a few weeks if it had any effect.
This is hacky AF and barely works. Will be replaced….
05/10/2023
Applied 1 cup of ferrilene diluted into 5 gallons of water using my new venturi fertilizer injector(https://www.dripdepot.com/item/drip-depot-economy-venturi-injector-inlet-outlet-size-half-inch-mpt?gad=1&gclid=CjwKCAjwge2iBhBBEiwAfXDBR4aJus7yuivPgjM5TuPE7fZXiqyzRTX7LeGTF-lzbnqKwH_UczD8TxoCcIgQAvD_BwE).
It works better than I expected. I estimate it took an hour to apply all of it.
05/04/2023
The weather has been amazing. We’re still in a drought but we have been getting a regular 1/2 inch of rain. The grass is green. I’m still irrigating but getting to skip some runs.
05/03/2023
Realized I need to raise or lower all of my catch wires or the vines will attach to them which is not what you want. Raised them all up to the top for now. Also realized I need to drive all of the trellis wire support posts about 8-12 inches deeper so the first set up catch wires is 10 inches or so above the cordon wire. Currently it’s 14-18 above which is wrong. I just need to drive them deeper. I’m having trouble with my irrigation drippers continuing to drip. They are pressure compensating but I think they are wearing out a bit. I bought some more expensive replacement drippers that require 15psi or to to drip. They’re expensive at 40 cents a piece. I think I can just replace the ones that drip incorreclty piecemeal but if I could do it over I’d install these fancy drippers from the beginning.
04/29/2023
Wow it’s been busy. Training vines requires a lot more attention than I expected. I’m in the vineyard almost every day training vines and knocking off laterals. I’m not sure how you would keep up on acres of vines unless you did it 60 hours a week. We had around 15 vines that didn’t come back so I ordered 1103P rootstock vines and replaced all of those. I realized the rootstock on all of the Montepulciano vines is not what I wanted. I wanted 1103P everywhere because it handles limestone and drought well. What I bought was 10/5BB and 10/101-14. Expensive mistake and the worst to make. These are not good for my area. They’re sensitive to chlorosis and drought and that makes sense because last year the worst chlorosis problems I had were in the Montepulciano. I will likely have to replant the Montepulicano. I think I can replace them over time planting the rootstock and doing grafts. It will be a good learning experience.
03/13/2023
We have bud burst and we have lots of growth. Applied 1 teaspoon of Ferrilene to all of the vines to get a jump on chlorosis issues.
02/06/2023
Vines pruned today. There were a lot that appeared to have no green wood. I’m not sure if they’re just still dormant or actually dead. 3 vines had crown gall. 1 vine was entirely rootstock and not the graft. I knew it was something like that as that one vine had very different leaves. I repaired the trellis by digging new holes and using concrete. I don’t think there will be any more issues there. If they can support all that ice the grapes won’t be an issue. Buds are swelling across the vineyard. Spring appears to be coming early.
02/02/2023
Ice Storm! The trellis and vines are all encased in an inch of ice. It’s insane. Several of the trellis endposts have been pulled out of the ground.
01/28/2023
Rows sprayed with glyphosphate. Spring is near but freezing rain is on the way.
12/20/2022
Turkey compost spread around all of the vines. Vine shelters removed from all of the vines big enough to stand up. Pruning soon!
12/12/2022
Vines have been losing their leaves and are going dormant. We’ve had a lot of consistent rain and the rye grass is doing amazing.
11/01/2022
I spread rye grass and wildflower seed in the rows. Two passes on the 10 setting.
10/24/2022
We had a storm and some of the vines that weren’t attached well were broken over. Probably 5 or so.
10/13/2022
Started removing vine shelters for winter. My back hurts.
10/10/2022
Fertilized all vines with about 1/2 shovel of turkey compost.
9/14/2022
Applied chelated iron spray to vines showing most chlorosis. Applied 64 oz or so of chelated iron through irrigation.
9/11/2022
Iron spikes inserted in vines showing most chlorosis. I will see how these do and I may install them for every vine. They’re made for palm trees and are a bit expensive but I think they will help. I also installed them around all of my new trees that are showing chlorosis symptoms.
https://www.lutzcorp.com/p-22-iron-chlorosis-spike.aspx
We’ve had quite a bit of rain in the last month. We went 3 weeks with no irrigation which is great. Rain helps to remove salts and anything else that’s been accumulating in the soil. The vines really liked the rainwater.
9/9/2022
Sprayed all vines with chelated iron. Montepulciano showing the most chlorosis. Vines are recovered from the attack of the deer.
9/1/2022
Sprayed all vines with chelated iron.
8/31/2022
Sprayed all vines with chelated iron.
8/1/2022
The drought is very bad right now. I’m irrigating about 15 gallons per vine per week which is a lot of water. Everything is dead around here. I noticed some deer damage. By the time I could get an eletric fence up they had stripped almost every bit of green from the vines. They are relentless. I put in a 3 wire electric fence 4 feet high with a second fence 4 feet inside that one with a 60 mile charger. After several hilarious touches of that fence the deer seem discouraged now. I think the vines will all recover.
7/15/2022
Sprayed all vines with chelated iron. Lots of vines showing symptoms of chlorosis. I appreciate the help from Penny at VineCo Tx who helped me determine what the issue it. Our soil is limestone and is around 8 PH. This means minerals like iron are chemically bound up with the calcium and it can be hard for plants to get what they need.
https://southernag.com/product/chelated-liquid-iron
6/15/2022
Vines doing well!
5/15/2022
Vines poking out of the grow tubes.
Soil analysis
Here is our soil analysis
