Vineyard Scouting: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

The rains finally let up on Friday and we took this opportunity to scout the vineyard. It is recommended that the vineyard be checked at least twice a week. We wondered what we would find with all of the rain that had fallen.
The Good:
We were really happy to see ladybugs in the vineyard. If we had aphids or mealybugs, ladybugs would be our first line of defense. These little orange ladies are extremely shy and they quickly run for cover or fly away when they see the camera approaching. We also leave any spiders that we see so that they can capture unwitting prey like this little green leafhopper.

The Bad:
We also saw some leaf damage and looking carefully, we caught the culprits. One kind of damage, which was holes in the leaves was caused by this brown cricket or grasshopper which we can't identify. We know that this is the nibbler because on all of the damaged leaves, we saw this little insect. They were a bit slow moving so we could squash them very easily. Then we found one very hungry caterpillar that had pretty much stripped the young leaves off one of the new shoots.

The Ugly:

But, the worst damage was being done by deer! We can't say that we weren't warned by numerous people, but we were so focused on getting the rocks out of the vineyard alley that we let this happen. As of yesterday, the vines affected were mainly on the perimeter of the vineyard so we quickly put in some pencil rods at the end of the day and we will go and check them today.
The good news is that we haven't seen any signs of powdery or downy mildew.