June is really busy here. We began by ending frost protection for the season. Frost protection has two components. One is easy and one is labor intensive. The easy part is setting the cold air drain machine to "automatic start" in March after the vines are...
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About 30 days after the vineyard was pruned, green shoots began to grow from the spur positions on each vine. The shoots grow into thick, hard, and brown canes on which the grape clusters hang. Although we want only 2 shoots to grow from each vine's 8 spur...
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The last photos we posted (found in our Hard At Work post) showed us preparing the vineyard for pruning. These photos show the vineyard immediately after it was pruned. You see that each of last year's canes is cut to the spur positions of each...
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Growing Cabernet Sauvignon on Howell Mountain is very labor intensive. This is especially true of a small vineyard in which the only work done by machine is the mowing of the permanent cover crop that grows between each row of vines. Although we have a...
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