Steve Mudd does Laser Guided Planting

The following morning, we went to visit Steve Mudd to ask about laser guided planting. We met Steve in his office and sat and talked with him for about two and half hours! At the moment, Steve is trying to dissuade us from planting our vineyard at 4 x 7. He said that 4 x 7 is too dense and he has seen where this does not really produce better quality grapes, moreover, we would need to get all kinds of small equipment to navigate the narrow rows. We threw him another curve ball when we said that we have ordered tall grafted vines and he asked us about the merit of ordering tall grafted vines. Steve also gave us a lot of tips like:

• establish a farm plan with our local Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS)
• get soil analysis done with Kinsey Agricultural Services, Inc. in Charleston, MO
• get custom blends for soil amendments from Fieldworks in Rochester, MA
• get petiole and leaf analyses from A & L Eastern Laboratories in Richmond, VA
• contact Steve Hart Lumber Company in Oregon for non-CCA treated posts

Steve showed us the laser guided planting machine and we decided that it could handle the tall grafts. Our visit with Steve came to an end. It was clear that we just tapped the tip of Steve's immense iceberg of knowledge for establishing a vineyard.