Friday, May 29, 2009

rain, rain go away...and come back when you can't stay so long

It's been a week of daily rains. Last weekend the Vidal Blanc was in the early stages of flowering, all the rest were a few days off. It's a critical time in the vineyard. A fungal infection in the flower at this stage can prevent the berries from setting, or can lay latent in the berries until they begin to ripen in August. At that point the fungus will wake up and consume the berry just as it approaches full ripeness.

The work continues, either way: We should be able to finish up the shoot thinning on the Viognier this weekend, and hopefully run the last catch wires in the Vidal Blanc block to begin shoot positioning. Our part timer was supposed to work by himself for the first time during the week this week putting in J-staples for the catch wires. We'll see how he did tomorrow.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I stumbled across your blog last night and really enjoyed reading up on your progress. Its nice to see other folks close to my age in similar "boat" and to see how they approach challenges.

I'll check back often!

HB

our girl said...

hey HB, thanks for checking in! are you on facebook? look me up!

Anonymous said...

Thanks for the invite. I need a little info for finding you on facebook. You can look me up on facebook if you'd rather. My email addy is hbhokie at gmail dot com