Phase 2 finished...for now

Finally, today all the vines are up on the wire. But while training up the vines, we discover about 1/10th of the vineyard already needs to be watered again. Now the hard part is figure out how to water only that portion of the vineyard and not the rest. If we water the rest of the vineyard, then it will be more suspectible to powdery mildew. This mildew damages the canes and can permanently hinder the vine's grape production. Like I said, it's always something.

Yesterday, I talked about the process of wooding but I didn't say anything about why it's a good thing besides that that is what mature grape vines look like....and that must be good. A vine going to the wooding stage is a good thing for 3 reasons.

First, the solid wood trunk has a better chance of survival over the winter. That hard, solid layer acts as a good insulator through the Colorado January cold. Where we live, we get very little snow and there is no frost base. That means the ground does go into a permafrost condition. This is very good, but it's still cold.

Second, the hard layer acts as an insect barrier. It makes it a little harder for those bastards to gnaw their way into the grape vine. They can still make a buffet lunch out of the leaves, but at least not the trunk.

Third, and most importantly for my back, when the canes are hardened they are hardier and we can now spray for weeds. We still have to be really careful, but we can take care of those buggers. Shoot, there goes my free health club workout routine. We have a special spray for commercial vineyards and have to be very careful about the mixture of water to chemical.

When I was out in the vineyard today, I kept hearing these booming sounds. Somewhere in between a shotgun and a sonic boom. Initially, I couldn't figure out what it was, then it came to me. Some of the peach farmers in the area set off these times booms throughout the day. Right now most of the peach trees are lucious with ripe peaches almost ready for market. So the booms are supposed to scare off the birds that love to munch on such fruits. I would think the birds would just come right back after a few minutes and begin feasting, but those in the know tell me it works.

Whatever, all I know is that when we have grapes next year on those beautiful vines, they are going to be protected by a solid sheet of netting. Those birds are really going to have to work at it to be able to get a taste.