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.