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.