Week 6 (July 8th - 12th)

This Eden-like week brought about many changes in the vineyard. Shoots tips have exploded in length, lateral shoot growth is taking off, berries are now approaching marble size, and thankfully the sucker production is slowing down. With all this added growth the vine shoots are in need of shoot re-positioning, or as we call it "combing", so that they can intercept the most amount of light. If the canopy gets too crowded, then the threat of disease exponentially increases, while the quality of the berry decreases. Since we are growing all of our vines for research purposes, in general we don't spend too much time altering their growth habits. We want to observe the quality of the growth and fruit of each plant in its natural setting, so that in the future we can further analyze and cross vines that require the least amount of input, while producing the best/most grapes. However, vines that are going through their second test get pampered since they may soon be candidates for commercial growers. 

Some vines are over-cropped now that the berries are increasing in size. Vines which are candidates for wine testing, the second tests, therefore need to have their number of clusters reduced so that the fruit is able to adequately ripen. As a general rule every cluster requires five leaves worth of energy to be able to fully ripen by the end of the season. This means that if a shoot is stunted, say only five nodes long, we have to reduce the number of clusters down to one. 

This is a serious case of downy mildew on a cluster that was hidden deep within the canopy. Once affected the fruit is unable to recover. This, along with black rot, powdery mildew, phomopsis, and anthracnose, concern growers the most. In order to control them, grape growers balance their pruning techniques/spraying programs on a weekly basis.

We are "skirting" the vines now (or as I prefer "tip-nipping") so that the shoots don't reach the ground. This allows more air to flow through the vineyard, which helps dry out the morning dew, while at the same time making suckering, spraying, and mowing easier. The best candidates for patentable vines naturally fizzle out their growth once the shoots reach 15 nodes, which can support three clusters. This also eliminates the need to skirt. 

A large task of mine this week was pruning new vines down to one shoot. When selecting the favorable shoot, I would need to take into consideration factors like shoot vigor, position, health, etc. Once I narrowed it down, I would tape the shoots to the bamboo with a tape gun so that the new trunks are established as straight as possible. 

Week Five (July 1st - July 3rd)

Now that the breeding program is done, we are back in the vineyards with our pruners in-hand suckering away. We are making sure that all adventitious shoots on and around the trunk are "suckered" so that we can next spray the weeds under the vines with round-up. Weeds at times are beneficial, as they retain soil water and enrich the soil via their symbiotic relationships with microbes, but they can also be very detrimental to vineyards. Since they effectively retain moisture, they also allow many forms of insects and fungi to thrive. We must first sucker and then spray the weeds because if any shoots are left then the round-up will be absorbed through the young leaves and enter the vine's tissues. The herbicide will then be transported across many portions of the plant via the vascular system, causing trunk and shoot tissue damage as it makes its way through. 

Also, as we were suckering we ensured that we cut the shoots to their basal most tissues (to their collars). If we accidentally leave any of the shoot tissue attached, due to an improper cut, then many more suckers will soon emerge, nullifying our previous work. This means that at times we need to dig down into the soil with our pruners to cut the last bit of the shoot.

I have been collecting vines and have now planted my first vineyard. Three of these five vines (Frontenac Gris, Frontenac, Edelweiss) are hybrids which were bred at the HRC. The rest (Riesling, and Pinot Blanc) are V. vinifera or true European grapes grafted onto Am. grape rootstock. These will need to be specially trellised, so that they can be buried in the winter, while the other three are plenty hardy. 

We bambooed the shoot cuttings that we panted in the vineyard a few weeks ago. Climbing vertically up these stakes will  allow the vines to have straight trunks, which allows easy vine maintenance.

On Tuesday we planted seedlings in the nursery. These plants were from crosses that had been made two years previous. The seeds were collected after that season's harvest, stored in temperature-controlled freezers (to simulate winter) for a few months, and then germinated and grown in a greenhouse. We planted somewhere around 2,000 individual plants. Thankfully we had a handful of helpers from the Arboretum so that we were able to finish the project in six hours. Pretty soon we'll have to come back to the nursery to steak them up to bamboo and a install drip irrigation. If they are able to bulk up enough during this growing season, then they will be pruned and stored overwinter in a cellar. Next, they will be planted among the other research vines, just like the little ones which we planted a few weeks ago in the photo above. 

Week Four (June 24th - 28th)

During week four we daily touched up the vineyards in the mornings (suckering, leaf thinning, shoot tucking, lawn-mowing) and emasculated and bred grapes in the afternoons. Some of the new/interesting things which I learned during this relaxing week in the sun can be summed up in this series of photos:

Pylloxera galls on the leaves of newly emerging shoots. These galls each encase hundreds of microscopic grape lice, which make their way to the shoot tips and exponentially affect/smother out the shoot growth. These inverts where what nearly destroyed the French wine industry in the late 1800s. Since the lice only attack the roots of European varieties, the French were able to overcome the problem by either hybridizing varieties with Am. grapes (creating French-Hybrids) or grafting the plants onto Am. rootstock. 

Jenny, John, and baby Mason Thull (and Lucky). John and his wife manage the vineyards of the HRC, as well as their own four acres.

Many vines are sending out air-roots from nodes along their cordons and trunks. This is a survival response due to their  actual root systems drowning from being waterlogged from all the rain we've had these past few weeks (more than 5"). Basically the plants are asphyxiating, and are therefore trying to find a way to develop a new root system. Luckily, it stopped raining this week and has been sunny for a few days! They should soon recover from their stress. 

Now that fruit is setting and the vineyard is damp, the whole plant is vulnerable to various fungi. This is an example of  Downy Mildew attacking  the new clusters, which will spread to other clusters and leaves if not treated with fungicide. The easiest way for growers to reduce these mildews is to thin the leaves from around clusters, which will allow adequate air flow, and spray fungicides. 

On Friday a group of soil scientists from around the country toured our apple orchards and vineyards at the HRC. This pic is of Jim Luby showing off the original (yup that's the very first) Honeycrisp apple tree which was planted at the HRC over thirty years ago. This tree changed the global apple market in a matter of a decade so much that now "soft" apples, such as Golden Delicious, are being shunned by consumers altogether.