I’m not sure what most vineyards use, but last year I bought 10 6/7″ x 8′ end posts from Tractor Supply. I believe they were treated pine. I priced them at Tractor Supply for about $15.00 with tax this year. A couple days ago I ordered 50 6/7″ x 8′ end posts from Swan Creek Farm Supply in Jonesville. He sources them from Acme Wood Preserving in West Virginia, who I originally contacted after going to the CCC Lumber in Elkin, they are the company that cuts the pine into posts and ships it to West Virigina. So in a round about way I am supporting the local economy.

Although I probably should have done a little more research and got 9 or 10′ posts, I know they exist. Jim Law, the owner of Linden Vineyards uses both, at his class last summer, he said the 9 or 10 footers were preferred, but expensive and difficult to obtain? Anyways, the 8 footers cost me $12.60 a piece from Swan Creek.

I think they’ll owrk just fine.

Looks like we got about 1/2″ of rain last night and this morning. Most say that new grapevines need about an inch a week during the growing season. Since I am dry farming, rain in moderate amounts is always appreciated!

Well my Cabernet franc is doing relatively well post frost. 75% of the plants have recovered nicely with siginficant shoot growth. The otehr 25% got hit a little harder and they are slow in kicking out new shoots, but progress is being made. No problems with deer yet, but I am spraying Deer Away on the corner plants and end posts.

Last year, with rain approaching and a spray due, I would have waited till after the rain. However, this spring I learned that downey mildew can become a problem a matter of hours once it rains. You want that protectant on the plant when it rains. So I mixed up 4 gallons of dithane and sulfur and gave the plants a thorough drubbing.

Since I don’t have an air blast sprayer, just a simple 15 gallon electric sprayer from tractor Supply, I am spraying on both sides of the rows to assure adequate coverage. My last spray was 10 days ago, and the plants were small enough that I only need about 1.5 gallons to cover a quarter acre. With some plants at 6″ shoot growth or more now, this time it took 4 gallons and I sprayed on both sides of the row.

I am going to try and get buy with this sprayer for this year. It will be a pain and time consuming, but hopefully it will work out ok. Maybe next year, I’ll have a small tractor and will invest in a small sprayer.

Well I had never heard of a lime sulfur spray before visiting my friend Mark Greene. According to the Internet,

“Objective of lime sulfur spray at is to reduce fungal inoculum on canes.”

From what I’ve read it seems to be sprayed most often when the vines are dormant. Most say to spray before bud swell.

And here is an image of the product and also a link to the label.

Product Label – “pfm877-b.pdf” – Acrobat (PDF) Format – 61kb

I found a little excerpt from another grower who uses copper mixed with sulfur to give him a couple of added degrees of frost protection:

His program changes a bit for frost prone areas. He mixes in copper with sulfur early from bud break to mid April. The copper kills ice nucleating bacterial and can give a vineyard one to two degrees of added frost protection.

“Timing is everything using copper. It has to be on 24 hours before a frost for it to do any good. Frost usually follows a rain,” he said. The Catch 22 dilemma is “probably the most difficult timing decision we make all year…put the copper on too early and the rain will wash it off, negating any frost control benefit,” said Roche.

“Frost can be significant on the coast ever three or fours years…maybe not in entire vineyards but in pockets. You can get a frost that burns the tips or one where you lose the entire crop. Frost can be costly on the coast,” he said.

1) I finally found something on using water to help protect grapes from frost, here is an excerpt:

Buds, flowers, and small fruit may be killed by spring frosts. After buds have swelled, minimize frost damage by sprinkling the vines with water when temperatures are expected to fall to 32°F or below. A conventional lawn sprinkler will do the job. The vines are protected by the heat released when ice forms.

Turn sprinklers on when the temperature drops to 34°F and sprinkle until all the ice melts. Shoot tips and flower clusters are damaged at 32°F. A small amount of cooling occurs when a sprinkler is turned on, and the 2 degrees from 34°F to 32°F provide a margin of safety.

The important thing to note is that the sprinklers mus tbe kept on, till the frost danger is over. If the ice becomes dry ice, the latent heat produced fromt he freezing ice will dissipate and temps surrounding the bud will drop below freezing. Also important is to start the sprinkling at temps slightly above freezing as the initial act of the ice creation causes temps to drop.

So I’m not crazy, that might have worked!

2) In terms of using copper to protect against frost, I haven’t found much data to support any chemical application that would help the grapes fight frost. There are treatments that may or may not work which claim to delay bud break. Here is an excerpt:

Chemical application: the use of chemicals is an attractive method because of the low cost and ease of application. Hundreds of chemical products such as growth regulators, anti-transpirants, oils and cryoprotectants have been used in order to increase cold hardiness and/or delay bud break of horticultural crops. These chemicals have been claimed to have the potential to provide freeze protection and prevent crop damage by unknown modes of action. However, inconsistent results over the last five decades have precluded the widespread use of chemical frost protection; and growers should be cautious about believing the promotional claims of these materials. During my graduate studies, I have applied a mixture of sugar and alginate (seaweed) on grapevine buds and canes few weeks before bud break. This has resulted in a gain of few degrees in freeze resistance and a delay in bud break by an average of 10 days for Chardonnay and other varieties. Although the results are promising, the cost of the material and the mode of application are limitations of this method especially in large vineyards. Also, when heavy rains follow the application, the product is washed off and becomes ineffective unless reapplied.

It’s been a physical challenge to even plant 700 vines. Jen’s been helping me, Brody has been helping me, but even with their help it’s still been tough to get ‘em all in the ground. Mostly because I still have other work to do during the day. But I am down to the last 44 plants, and those will go in the ground today!

On Sunday night, the night when the frost danger looked to be high, the winds kicked up just a bit around midnight anf the temp actually rose out of the 30’s and into the 40s, and stayed that way all night.

I’ve learned a couple new things in the past couple days which I have to research and will post my findings here. Both of these learning originated from my friend Mark Greene, who is putting the finishing touches on his winery at his five acre vineyard.

1) For the first spray of the season he sprays a lime and sulfur mixture. I’ve never seen that on a spray program, but it’s a commerical mix. I don’t really know it’s purpose though.

2) Mark mentioned that copper could be sprayed to help protect against frost. I’ve never heard of this either.

Always learning something new!

Whether the fan made any difference or not, I don’t know…but there didn’t appear to be any signs of frost. One more night to get through!

Well the conditions seem ideal for another frost tonight. The winds have calmed to near zero. Temps are at 45.6 degrees and falling, dew point is low, skies are clear. Needless to say I am concerned and not quite sure what I am going to do.

One thing I did is I went out and dropped $200 on an industrial size tubular fan from Lowes, it’s a big sucker with wheels. I positioned that on the slope facing the lowest portion of the plants that have budded out. My hope is that the extra air movement will buy me a degree or two by mixing up the air a little and not allowing the colder air to settle.

We’ll see how well it works! I am monitoring my weather station data every ten minutes and plan to get up around 3am to see where it all stands…remember, the lowest temps are always just before sunrise!

Brent

Well ALL of my Cabernet Franc are growing wonderfully now. Growth is very strong and much more vigorous than last year. This is a good thing for this year as these plants were slow growers last year because I let the grass grow under the trellis and it shut down the vines significantly.

Even with the lost of first few shoots due to frost, the plants are doing nicely. However, the temps are expexted to drop into the mid 30’s or lower either tonight or the next night, so I’m not sure what I am going to do, because it would not be good to have frost hit these vines again. I will probably buy some large, veyr large industrial fams from Lowe’s to help move the air around. I will be watching the weather station closely tonight!

On Friday, April April 22nd, work began on getting 700 plants in the ground. My row direction is generally easy west with 28 plants per row. I went to an 8′ row spacing with 6′ between the plants. This was done because there is a portion of my land which a little too low, so I figure it made no sense to plant in that area. This I had to squeen more plants on to my existing land which forced me to tighten the rows.

My vines arrived in great shape via UPS on Thursday night. I kept them packed in the original packing over night. On Thursday and Friday I marked out the vineyard. I did this by measuring out the four corners and and staking them. I then measured off the rows with a 200′ measure every 8′. I staked those end points and ran them parallel to the road. I then measured out the first row at 174′, which less the 3′ space next to each end post, gave me 168′ divided by 6′ equaled 28 plants in a row.

I ran some bailing twine from stake to stake for the first row and then marked each plant location with masking tape around the twine. I then would line up more stakes next to the first row, run the twine and mark the hole locations with tape from the first row of tape markers…that saved me having to keep measuring every 6′ every row. I just marked 5 rows at once, then took each set of stakes and placed them at the 8′ row markers that I had previously marked. I then used a coffee can and screwed it to a 4′ 2×2, drilled some holes in the bottom and filled it up with hydrated lime. It was then a simple matter of walking down each row and tapping the can over the tape marker which demarked the location for each plant hole with a spot of white lime.

The farmers were able to work there tractor and auger combo down each role and simply moved the string to the side to drill each hole. When all 28 holes were augered (generally to a depth of 18-24″), then the string was retightened and placed back over the holes to use a guide in keeping our rows straight.

We used an 8″ auger, which was nicer than using a 12″ like we did last year. It allows for less variability in where you place the plant, allowing for your rows to be straighter. With a 12″ hole, if you place that plant on the top of one hole and the bottom of the other hole your rows can be pretty unexven. By using the string as a guide and by only placing your plants flush to the left or right of each hole (when possible) you can get your row pretty straight!

The soil was moist but workable, we had not had rain for about siz days. I soaked the vines for about 2 hours and then we started to plant the buggers. We all had to stop because it started raining about 5 oclock. However, we got aboot 250 vines in the ground by Saturday.

I have the vines in a dark cool place and water spray them down with water, and keep them under some mulch to keep the roots moist until we can get them in the ground.