Soil Test Results

In mid-August, our friend Mary helped us to take some soil samples from our vineyard. Our first sampling was done in November, 2012 in order to determine what kind of soil admendments we would need. First of all we needed to raise the pH of the field from a rather acidic pH 5.3 to something more neutral. After planting our vines in 2013, we took another sampling of our vineyard and learned that the east side of our planting where the chardonnay was located was still somewhat acidic at pH 5.5 for the northeast and pH 5.4 for the southeast side. We put down more lime in the fall of 2013 and the latest soil test results show the following:

What the above diagram shows is that we still have a problem with pH in the southeast portion of our vineyard and we've managed to pinpoint the problematic area. Thanks to Mary's help!
We know that in our portion of Connecticut, we have acidic soils. What is so important about raising the pH of our soil is that the availability of the macro- and micronutrients to the vines are very pH dependent as shown in this diagram:

Mark Chien of the Penn State Cooperative Extension in his presentation Grapevine Nutrition recommends that the pH for growing grapevines be between 5.5-7.0.