Hello and Welcome,
This is the 2018 April Climate
Update from Amalie Robert Estate. A FLOG communication.
Springtime in Wine Country is
almost as exciting as harvest. There are sunny days and rainy days. Warm
temperatures and cool temperatures. Hail is mostly a Springtime event, however
we are sure that with all of the uncertainty in the world, that it may very
well become a fall event. As in “What the hail!?”
End posts, they're not just for
wires.
Click on the image to see our
vineyard floor overseer in action.
And then there is budbreak. This
is the sign we are looking for from Mother Nature. It shows us that the vines
have wintered over from last year’s Cluster Pluck and they are ready for the
growing season. As the first couple of leaves unfurl, the vines look like they
are sporting a line of little green butterflies. This lasts about 14.7 seconds,
and then they start growing like the fruit bearing vines they are. Raising
catch wires is the next task on the horizon and approaching rapidly.
But wait, let’s enjoy the moment.
Springtime in wine country also gives us a wonderful palate of blooms on all
sorts of plants. Mother Nature really puts on a show! Colors, textures and
aromas from all sorts of flora attract the ever busy bee and the cycle of
pollination is carried out dutifully.
And Ernie has his own cycle this
time of year. His job is to feed our vines. Sounds quite simple, and it is,
really. But just like everything in farming, the devil is in the details. Let’s
review, shall we?
His first job is to incorporate
the cover crops he drilled in last fall. Note this pre-supposes that the cover
crop got drilled in last Fall. And it did. Last fall the vineyard was treated
to a cover crop blend of Austrian winter peas and barley. The idea here is to
have the peas set Nitrogen in the soil and the barley to take it up and hold it
until the spring.
Nitrogen is mobile in the soil.
That means the winter rains will wash it away if there is not some plant to
take it up from the soil. Just think of the peas as a solar panel generating
electricity and the barley as the battery that holds that energy until the
spring. That’s when Ernie comes along and turns the soil so that the Nitrogen
is released into the soil and the vine roots can pick it up. That’s the goal,
feeding our vines without the use of chemical fertilizers. These cover crop
plants also hold the soil on the hill in the face of daunting winter rains. Ha,
it’s a twofer!
So, Ernie’s first pass is with
the virtually indestructible chisel plow. What a great piece of farming
equipment. It is relatively inexpensive, does not require power from the tractor
and is really hard, but not impossible, to break. This implement attaches to
the crawler and Ernie drives it about 2 miles per hour through every other row.
Ideally these are the rows with the cover crop and not the rows with the
permanent grass.
Click on the image to see Ernie
and the chisel plow in action.
The chisel plow also performs
double duty. The primary objective is to open our silty clay loam Bellpine soil
to make it easy for the (easy to break) rototiller pass. Seven shanks go down
about 8 to 10 inches and open up the soil.
While those shanks are down
there, they also perform a little root pruning. Vines are always trying to find
soil moisture and the shallow roots pick up the easy soil moisture during the
spring and fall. Ernie is having none of it. He wants deep roots to help the
vines find soil moisture during the dry months of August and September. Ernie
schedules his annual trip to the dentist after this pass to restore any loose
fillings that may have gone missing.
Right, now it is on to the
rototiller pass. The first step is to inspect and replace any broken tines from
the fall cover crop regime. If he is lucky, he can skate by without having to
replace any clutch disks. But this is farming, and usually if not for bad luck,
there is no luck at all.
Click on the image to see Ernie
and the rototiller in action.
The rototiller, for all its
agrarian vagaries, does a very good job of incorporating the nitrogen rich
cover crop plants into the soil where all manner of microbes, worms and other
no-see-ums are waiting for them. It’s dinner time on the vineyard floor!
And it looks nice, all fluffed up
like that. It is important to have a little air exchange in the soil. Most
microbes are aerobic and they need oxygen to function properly. The rototiller
does this at no extra charge. And it helps to level the rows and our side
hills. Ernie had to terrace some parts of the vineyard due to the steep side
slopes. The rototiller helps move the soil from the uphill side to the downhill
side, making a level surface to drive on. The rototiller is not such a bad
implement after all.
Next Ernie hooks up the Schmeiser
seed drill! Woohoo! We are going to drill some cover crop now! This is the
third and final pass in the cover crop rows, putting down the new summer cover
crop seeds.
Click on the image to see Ernie
and the Schmeiser in action.
Amalie Robert Estate is a dry
farmed vineyard, we are “True to the soil and True to the vintage. ®” So the
summer cover crops have to get by on the morning dew we receive from our
on-shore flows coming in from the Pacific Ocean. These cover crops also have to
provide nutrition for the voracious, carnivorous insects that roam the
vineyard.
Lady bugs, earwigs, mites and all
other manner of insects are on guard against cane borers and parasitic mites
that feed on our vines. These good bugs are the front line of defense in
keeping our vines healthy and producing world class wines.
And when they can’t find bad bugs
to eat, you still have to feed them. That’s one reason we use Buckwheat and
Vetch for our summer cover crop blend. These plants need very little water,
produce pollen (which is protein) for our army of good bugs and will set
Nitrogen to feed our vines in the fall.
When it is all said and done,
Ernie makes 3 passes in every other row to set our vineyard floor straight for
the growing season. It’s about 18 acres worth of land, or 20 lineal miles that
he is cycling through. Those 3 passes combine to make a total of about 60
lineal miles, at about 2 miles per hour. This saves him from having to use
chemical fertilizers to feed our vines, and that is a good thing. And he has to
mow the permanent rows, twice, at 3 miles an hours - go speed racer! If you
sent Ernie an e-mail in April and did not get a response, now you know why.
What a Springtime workload this man has!
Ernie, right in the middle of it.
Now before we get onto the task
of shoot positioning, raising catchwires, and harnessing all of the vine’s
Springtime growth, let’s do the numbers while we still have time.
The high temperature for April
was 82.90 degrees recorded on the 24th at 3:24 pm. The low temperature was
31.50 degrees recorded on the 3rd at midnight. After gently massaging 3,600
data points, we find an April degree day accumulation of 110.10 degree days.
The second half of the month was responsible for 71% of the heat accumulation,
logging 78.65 degree days.
And we start the 2018 growing
season with our soils holding a good amount of moisture. Rainfall for April
totaled 5.80 inches. As a dry farmed vineyard, our objective is to manage the
available soil moisture through the summer growing season.
If we can make it to September,
we usually can get a little rainfall to extend our ripening period into
October. As we are all painfully aware after these last few vintages, sugar
accumulation is a function of heat, and aroma and flavor are a function of time
on the vine.
Kindest Regards,
Dena & Ernie
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