News and Announcements!
by Rick Dunst, Viticulturist, Double A Vineyards, Inc.
Entire textbooks (or chapters of textbooks, anyway) have been devoted to the topic of pruning, training, and trellising grapevines. This article will provide a brief overview of the main concepts of pruning grapevines, with emphasis on pruning during vineyard establishment.
Dormant grapevine pruning during vineyard establishment is performed annually with two main goals in mind – training the vine to the desired configuration on the trellis, and building vine reserves to support a grape crop in the future. Crop control is a third goal of pruning once vines are established, but early vine development should not be sacrificed for small crops in the early life of a vineyard. Once a vineyard is mature, pruning is used to limit crop size by producing fewer clusters with larger berries and higher quality potential.
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by Rick Dunst, Viticulturist, Double A Vineyards, Inc.
Now that harvest is over and winter is approaching, the staff at Double A Vineyards is starting to get a lot of phone calls and e-mails from our customers asking for assistance in selecting appropriate varieties to grow on their sites. While many of our customers know exactly what they want, others are just getting started at growing grapes and may not know which varieties are best suited for their vineyard location. Grape varieties differ in their tolerance to winter low temperatures; they bud out in the spring at different times, making them more or less susceptible to spring frost; and, they require a certain amount of heat units and length of growing season to fully ripen at a given location. Knowing the limitations of your site is largely a matter of personal experience (and that of your neighbors), and our catalog and website contain a wealth of information that can help you decide on a grapevine variety suited to your site.
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by Rick Dunst, Viticulturist
As the 2011 growing season comes to an end, we all know what comes next - winter. In areas where extreme cold temperature or temperature drops occur, winter protection of grapevines may be necessary. By their nature, grafted vines are most susceptible to winter injury, particularly at the graft union. Own-rooted vines are also susceptible to winter injury if temperatures exceed their level of winter hardiness. This article is intended primarily for growers of grafted vines where sub-zero (Fahrenheit) temperatures are likely or possible, but the cane burial techniques discussed can also be used with
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