The First Months - April through June 2017

When we first began exploring the possibility of growing grapes for winemaking, I was disappointed to find there weren’t many blogs or videos out there.  So I decided to start one to document our experiences.  Once we decided to go forward with our little venture, there really wasn’t much to report.  We selected the site on our property, did soil tests and attended as many vineyard related functions as we could find in our corner of the world.    Descriptions of those events are documented in earlier postings.

Then the BIG day finally arrived – the UPS man delivered our tender little bundles of joy – and we discovered exactly WHY there aren’t many blogs out there.   No one who is actually growing grapes has the time!   I now understand that this vineyard will require more time and effort of us than raising two children.

Our vines arrived on a rainy day at the beginning of April.  They were bundled by variety, covered in mud and wrapped in plastic with wet cloth to keep them from drying out.    I gleefully dragged the huge box out to the designated location only to realize the soils were much too wet to plant.    So back into the barn and out of reach of the livestock dog the vines went, while I went to the garden center for bags of unfertilized soil.   

Did you know that very few garden centers sell anything other than pre-fertilized soils?   Two more days passed until I located plain garden soil that wasn’t actually fine chopped mulch or chemically enhanced.  The weather had been nice and the soils were ready to plant. 

Here’s a little bit of friendly advice for anyone in central Virginia thinking about growing grapes.  Even if you prepare the soil in advance, prepare it again on the first nice day before you expect to receive your vines.   All the rain we received early this year made our late winter soil preparation virtually useless.  After four hours of digging and heavy lifting, only ten Cabernet vines and ten Syrah vines made it into the ground before it started raining.  Again. 

Out came the buckets and potting soil as temporary housing for those poor patient vines.    Between weather delays and my work schedule, it took three weeks to get them all in the ground.   One hundred vines, 21 days of labor.  And that was just the beginning. 

While I was busy spending all of my weeknights and weekends trying to get the last of the vines in the ground, the well-watered grasses and weeds were busy overtaking my fledgling grapes.  Did I mention how much I hate that creeping ryegrass we inadvertently imported as hay for our sheep and goats?  It is almost impossible to kill and I swear I can see it grow.  It rapidly overtook the bare ground around the vines.   It also had to be hand pulled from the base of every single vine…all one hundred of them.   Another thing you can expect after lots of rain is a lot of mosquitos.   I must have gone through a case of Deet while out there pulling those weeds.   At least the weather was finally cooperating.

Once the vines had been weeded it was time to bring out the garden tractor to beat back the jungle threatening to overtake my little vineyard.   By this time there was so much green mass the tractor stalled every six feet or so.   The solution was to raise the blades as high as they would go for the first pass, make a second pass to gather up the clippings, then make a third pass with the blades set to normal.  I think we’re going to invest in a bush hog or flail mower for next year.

Finally, at the end of May, I could sit back and contemplate my beautiful little vineyard.  I proudly walked the rows, inspecting the thriving vines, glass in hand, listening to the cicadas and drone of the bees.  And then I found something weird on one of the leaves.  These odd little spots cropped up on one leaf, only one.  I snipped it off, took these photographs and sent them off to the Extension office where I think they fell into the spam bin.  I never did hear back, but that’s okay.  I walked those vines every day and never saw another leaf like it.   But I did find aphids.  And the nasty mean ants that come with them.  Back to Stranges for more horticultural soap to blast those suckers off. 

   

Then the heat came and life got in the way so I didn’t get out to inspect those vines for two whole weeks.   And that was a big mistake.   While I wasn’t looking, Japanese Beetles moved in.  Normally our chickens maintain the bug populations, but this Spring we were hit by a fox raising kits.   Now I can accept – even if I’m not happy about – the loss of a chicken or two.  After all it is Nature’s cycle of life, but after losing several birds a day for over the course of three weeks, it was time to shut down the all you can eat buffet and lock them up.   Unfortunately the end result was a beetle population explosion.

Japanese Beetle Damage

I wish I could say the crisis ended there.  Oh no, the some of the Cabernet, Syrah and Albarino vines had produced grape clusters! (How did I miss the flowering???)  Mid-June is already getting behind with pruning the vines back to one stalk so they could harden off for winter and set up for next year’s trellis training.  And here we were with multi stalked vines with roughly half of their leaves skeletonized.  I felt positively evil clipping them back and tying them off to their support stakes.  Worse, I had to take drastic action to save them…it was time for Sevan.  

Tiny grape clusters 

As a beekeeper, I HATE to use Sevan dust.  My preference would have been the liquid form, but I couldn’t find it anywhere.   Fortunately bees aren’t interested in grape leaves and none of the weeds around the vines were in flower.  But it still felt like Nature herself was ready to punish us for such a transgression.   I would take an entomologist to identify every critter that occupied those vines as I toiled under the brutal summer sun.   Most were probably benign to grapevines, even beneficial, but spiders aren’t my favorite insect and those damn horse flies…where did they even come from?  We haven’t had horses in ten years, and none of our neighbors have horses or cows.  Hard to believe, but the mosquitos after dusk were much less annoying, particularly when one is coated with Deep Woods OFF!®   So I committed my crime last night, out in the vineyard, flashlight in hand, delicately dusting the remaining leaves of my precious vines.

What Japanese beetles can do to a vine in no time at all.

Now as I sit here typing away to share with you some of the tribulations the first year can bring, glass of vino in hand, I no longer question the cost of the bottle it came from.   Growing wine grapes won’t be all fun and games, forget those plans of sipping vino in a shady pergola, enjoying the sun setting over your vines – at least not yet.  It is going to be work…lots of hard, physically demanding work.  And sometimes you have to make hard choices.

Playing in the Dirt

We began the testing with a little assistance from our LGD.   His native curiosity is what will keep the four and two legged critters away from our vines.

Even in the small (0.08 acre - 3500 avg sf) area where we will be planting our first vines, the soils range in color.  

 The entire area we selected is supposed to be a type of soil known as Appling Sandy Loam which should be good for growing.  It is well drained, particularly on our 2-5% slope but it will also hold enough water to sustain the vines once they establish their root system.   Here is the description from the USGS Soils web site:
  

APPLING SERIES -The Appling series consists of very deep, well drained, moderately permeable soils on ridges and side slopes of the Piedmont uplands. They are deep to saprolite and very deep to bedrock. They formed in residuum weathered from felsic igneous and metamorphic rocks of the Piedmont uplands. Slopes range from 0 to 25 percent. Near the type location, mean annual precipitation is 45 inches and mean annual temperature is 60 degrees F.

TAXONOMIC CLASS: Fine, kaolinitic, thermic Typic Kanhapludults

The trick is going to be figuring out which root stock will work best with which varieties on the soils we have.  At 35 inches, the bottom of our test pit, we hit this yellow clay with white striations.  It may be kaolinitic clay.   We sent a sample to the Virginia Tech lab for identification.  Hopefully it is something our vines can work with.

As you can see, this soil is still holding moisture around two feet down.  Our last rain was almost a week ago.

Virginia Vineyards Association

Today we submitted our membership to the Virginia Vineyards Association  an organization of viticulturists and associated business entities dedicated to growing great wine in Virginia.  I wish we had found the organization sooner as they sponsor some great seminars.   The Summer Technical Seminar is to be held on June 5th at Barboursville Winery & Vineyards.   Unfortunately we are unable to attend, but the Winter Event will be a must do event!

Another recommended resource we have purchased is the Wine Grape Production Guide for Eastern North America


We also marked out the location for our test plot.   It is roughly 0.08 acres that could fit 104 vines at 8 x 4 foot spacing.   The area is 60' x 64' x 80' x 40'   Tomorrow we'll take soil samples for testing. Once we receive that information we will have a better idea of the varieties we can grow.

Once the test soils are gathered, we begin the process of marking rows in the field.  Instead of using herbicides to kill off grasses/weeds in the vine rows, we will be using a leaf litter mulch i.e. clean chopped leaves.   This will kill the vegetation, add some organic compost and prevent weed seed germination all at the same time.