Monday, June 16, 2008

Following Up From the Frost

Since I've been making it a practice to photograph the same grape vine and post it here, I'd thought I'd do a follow up from the last post.

It's amazing how much growth we've had since that last frost a few weeks ago. But it's too early to tell what sort of yield we'll have. There are a few tiny grape clusters, but not many.

However, around the rest of the vineyard where we didn't get hit by the frost, the grapes are in bloom. It's a special ephemeral scent of early summer -- the spicy sweet fragrance of blossoming grapes.

Friday, June 06, 2008

I Was Wrong... (It Wasn't Really Spring)


Take a look at the post below. Yep, I was wrong.

As much as it really felt like we were past the threat of frost.... we weren't. We've had 3 or 4 frosts since then. Of course, I planted most of my tomatoes. I sheltered them on nights when we had a frost warning. Unfortunately, we weren't always warned and I lost quite a few from unannounced spotty frost. So now I've filled in the holes where I lost plants and the varieties are completely mixed up...

The grapes held up through all of the frosts until the most recent one (last week). That frost hit several of the grape varieties pretty hard... as you can see. We'll have to see how well they come back. The only good news it that it hit varieties that we don't count on -- most of the ones in the vineyard area east of the tasting room are old hobbyist varieties planted by my dad long before we were a commercial winery.

Ok, it's now June. Are we finally safe?

Ah, the pleasures of agriculture.