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Tuesday, March 8, 2016

Thinking About Replanting Our Vineyard

We knew that this day will come sooner or later and right now we still have a little breathing room before we are faced with replanting our vineyard. We ordered 6,000 vines in January, 2015 which meant that those plants would be available for planting in spring 2016. The thought of replanting 6,000 vines is very daunting. Unlike the first time we planted our vineyard, where we hired a crew from Long Island to do laser guided planting, this was not an option for us this time since we already have our trellis system in place.
We went to see our John Deere Dealer in January to see what kind of equipment he had for drilling holes. Tim showed us his excavator to which we could hook up a beefy looking auger. One problem with this solution is that the excavator is almost as wide as the width of our rows. Which would give us little room for error. (I can envision trellis wire being tangled in the auger---not a good thought.)
My husband is always on the look out for equipment and information that will help our cause and a few days ago, he came upon the following YouTube video "Planting the Grape Vines at the Breitenbach Valiant Vineyard" using a mini-skidsteer:
This video makes planting a vineyard with trellis wires in place a doable proposition. Meanwhile, we received information from our nursery that they would not be able to deliver the entire order and could only send 4,000 of the 6,000 vines that we had ordered. For some deep seated psychological reason, the task of planting 4,000 vines doesn't seem as daunting as 6,000 vines, but unfortunately it does extend the date of a full vineyard harvest for at least 2 more years.

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