Friday, May 31, 2019

Shoot Thinning the Auxerrois

We are now shoot thinning our Auxerrois. Last year, we came to the conclusion that we must raise our fruiting wire in order for our vines to reach the first catch wire and I blogged about it here: Rethinking Our Vineyard Trellis.
We tried it only on our Auxerrois as a proof of concept for our hypothesis that by raising the fruiting wire, our vines will be able to reach the first catch wire in their initial growth phase, thereby helping the vines to get going in the correct orientation to be in the catch wires. Why does this matter? We hope that by doing this, we will avoid the endless shoot positioning that we had to do last year.
Here is a photo of our Auxerrois achieving that:
While we were working on thinning the Auxerrois we noticed that there were many secondary shoots that also grew. One way to tell the secondary shoot from the primary shoot is that the secondary shoot may or may not have any inflorescence. In this photo, both the primary and the secondary shoots had inflorescence, but the primary had two instead of one. The secondary shoot, therefore was picked off.
We have had a very rainy spring so far with April showers bringing May showers. However, Mother Nature has now accommodated our work day but raining in the evening. Still, when we get to the vineyard, the moisture is still on the vines, preventing us from shoot thinning until it dries off. This spring has been cool with occasional punctuations of heat and the vines seem to like this slow entry into summer.

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