Vineyard Planting Schematic

Bill, Jeff, Barry and my husband worked on our north field during the fall and winter of 2012. There was a lot of work to do. It began with turning the north field and removing all of the boulders located in the topsoil. At the same time, we sent away our soil samples to be tested for the pH and nutrient content. After we received the report, we contracted Fieldworks and Crop Protection Services to amend our soils. Time was running out where it would be possible to work the land, but Mother Nature was kind and allowed the extensive work of tiling the field to occur, albeit in snowy, cold and windy conditions.

Our north field, now has dimensions of 826 feet north to south and 295 feet east to west. These exact dimensions allowed us to further define the plantable area of our vineyard. Since we are planting using a 4 feet in row vine spacing and a 7 feet between row spacing, we know that we need 1556 vines for an acre. We left a north headland of 35 feet to allow for turnaround space for our equipment and left 25 feet on either side of the east-west borders of the vineyard. This meant that we had a total of 756 feet for the north-south dimension and 245 feet for the east-west dimension. What this translates into is that for our 4x7 feet planting, we will have 189 vines north-south and 36 rows, east-west.
Originally, we ordered a specific amount of vines to cover this area, but now with the exact dimensions of the vineyard having been determined, we knew exactly how many vines we needed to cover the total area. Fortunately for us, when we contacted Mercier Vineyards, although this was their first venture into growing tall grafts, they mentioned that they had a better than expected success rate and had additional tall grafts that we could purchase. Great news!
The typical recommended vine density spacing is 6 feet by 8 feet which will accommodate 908 vines per acre. With land being the limiting factor, our 4x7 density makes the most use of the available space. Therefore, in our current field, which is approximately 4.25 acres, we are effectively planting the equivalent of approximately 7.5 (6804/908) acres of plants.