Hello and Welcome,
September gave us a chance to
rest, a "7th inning stretch" if you like.
October, it seems, will be more
"interesting", and so it should be. For example, when I look out into
the vineyard, it seems like it"...gets late early out there."
Here are the numbers. We
logged 414 degree days (276 through the 15th and an additional 138
through the end of the month.) This brings us to a cool climate viticulture
total of 1,896 degree days for the growing season. Clearly with fruit in the
field, "It ain't over 'til its over."
This is theoretically
insignificant from the 2007 degree days of 1,891. But, as we all know,
"...there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice
there is."
The rainfall was a scant 0.67
inches and was timed perfectly just 24 hours after all of my cover crop was
drilled in. However, I am tempered by the sentiment that "if the world
were perfect, it wouldn't be."
I sampled the one cluster that was
representative of the remaining 500,000 on Wednesday September 31, and it was
21.8 Brix and 3.37 ph. I asked Carl if the fruit looked good, and he told me it
was as good "...as the day is long." Hopefully we did not
make "...too many wrong mistakes" this year.
This just in from Patty Skinkis
regarding CO2 assimilation in the vineyard. If she has the time to run this
over the next few years, we may find "The future ain't what it used to
be." Thanks Patty!!!
Ernie
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... I finally got around to looking at the assimilation rate
of a full canopy during a mid-summer day.
The location we used had the following information:
PN 115 on 101-14 at 5' x 7' spacing
Date of data collection: 7/30/08
Air temp: 26.09 deg C
Results are from 90 readings taken throughout a treatment
block:
CO2 assimilation rate = 20 umols/m2/s
Average canopy leaf area = 4.51 m2/vine
Assuming that the highest sunlight hours are from 10-2 pm
where this rate would be applicable, then a single vine would assimilate 288000
umol CO2 during that time or 0.288 mol CO2.
We see assimilation rates going down from our sampling date
of 7/30 to 9/11 as follows:
7/30/08 air temp 26.09 deg, assimilation rate = 20
umol CO2/m2/s
9/11/08 air temp 27.83 deg C, assimilation rate = 14.6
umol CO2/m2/s
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