Remember this...

My husband and I were remembering the time that we had what appeared to be tumbleweeds in our vineyard. This was the fall of 2013 when we were preparing our vineyard for the cover crop that we were going to put into the vineyard alleys. The tumbleweeds were created by this device, a cultivator.

During the growing season, because this was the very first year that we planted, we had only bare soil on the vineyard floor and a lot of weeds took advantage of this lapse on our part to grow in profusion. We planned on growing a cover crop and I blogged about this in Methods of Seeding a Cover Crop on November 2, 2013.

What that blog neglected to show was the result of cultivating a field full of weeds. It looked like this.
This picture on the left, shows a closeup of one of the rows that was cultivated. The cultivator not only pulled up all the weeds, it also pulled out more rocks! It was a mess! Included in this photo is the three-pronged hoe that I was using to gather all the dried weeds together.
I thought that I could put all the weeds into a pile so that we could put it into the trailer and haul it away. My husband was a bit more realistic than I and convinced me (after many attempts) that we could just leave the dried weeds in the alleys and put down the cover crop seeds. It would take far more time than we had to pick up all of the dried weeds. I capitulated!
This is what a full field of dried weeds looked like viewing the field from south to north:

Although this view is from the north to the south, unlike the previous view which is from south to north, on November 18, after sowing the cover crop seeds, this is what our field looked like. Not a trace of the tumbleweeds and little green growth in the alleys!

It's a miracle to me how the tumbleweeds vanished!

Beneficial Insects in Our Vineyard

I am back to reading the online article, Manage Insects on Your Farm. On pages 50-53 of the article are pictures of insect predators and parasitoids which is a very good first start to what you might see in your vineyard.
When we first began farming our vineyard, we were rather clueless as to what the beneficial insects and parasitoids are but we slowly got the hang of who are the good bugs and who are the bad bugs. We also realized that we needed to know some of the lifecycles of these good and bad bugs so that we knew the appropriate action to take when faced with them.
Here is a lineup of some of the beneficial insects that we've seen in and around our vineyard.
Beneficial Insects

Insect	Insect
Praying Mantis	Praying Mantis
Spined Soldier Beetle	Spined Soldier Beetle
Robberfly	Thread Waist Wasp
Anchor Bug	14-Spotted Ladybird Beetle
Black Headed Blue Skimmer Dragonfly	Common Whitetail Dragonfly

We are very happy to have these predators in our vineyard, our IPM patrol!
References:
1. Miguel A. Altieri, Clara I. Nicholls with Marlene A. Fritz, Manage Insects on Your Farm, Published by Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education (SARE), College Park, MD.

Vintage 2022: First Day of Spring

It's already the third week in March! The first day of spring was on Monday! On Friday husband downloaded the data from our weather logger in the vineyard. When he downloaded the data, he mentioned that it was 76 degrees F. I was really surprised.

The data is a little blurry but what it shows on the x-axis is the time from December 21 to March 18 and on the y-axis the temperature from 0-76 degrees. What it also shows is the temperatures oscillating but trending upwards.
That is good news for us, but it also means that we need to ramp up our work in the vineyard! Bye! Gotta run!

2019 Vietti Barbera d'Asti and a Collaborative Dinner

As mentioned in the previous blogpost, we had inclement weather coming in on Saturday so we thought that we would invite our neighbors over for lasagna. They volunteered to make salad and a dessert so that it turned into a collaborative pop-up dinner.
The lasagna was made with a layer of spinach, chopped onions, ricotta and parmesan, a layer of sauteed mushrooms, a layer of Italian sweet sausage in red sauce and a final layer of the spinach mix. It was baked in the oven at 350 for 1-1/2 hours while the aroma permeated our home. We served the lasagna with a red sauce "gravy".

Our neighbors brought over a winter salad with arugula, dried fruits, toasted almonds with a citrus honey vinaigrette and a scrumptious chocolate cake called Zizzy's favorite cake with cream cheese buttercream.

To pair with the food, we served a 2019 Vietti Barbera d'Asti. We are fans of Vietti Barbera d'Asti and have been drinking it for a while. It is the perfect wine with red sauce foods, especially pizza. The typical acidity associated with Barbera is tamed and there is the right amount of fruit that shines through the wine. It is an easy drinking red wine. Moreover, the price is right at under $20.00.
The collaborative dinner was great fun and we ate, drank and were merry!
Here is a little information about Vietti:
Vietti makes a range of wines and we have also tried the Barbera d'Alba, the Roero Arneis and the Nebbiolo.
Their quirky but beautifully illustrated labels make it easy to find on the wine store shelf.

Vintage 2022: March Update

We have been in the vineyard since mid-February with pre-pruning duties which involves cutting the wire that holds down last year's fruiting canes, taking in the Agfast and cutting the top of last year's shoots which are now canes. So far, March has brought us some very nice spring-like weather interspersed with reminders that it can still feel like winter. We did escape two snow related forecasts the first on March 9 which was supposed to bring 2-4 inches of snow and the second this past weekend which was supposed to bring a mixture of rain, freezing rain and snow.

Since there was no snow we were able to get back into the vineyard on March 10 and resume our work. However, this past weekend was not as productive for us because it was really windy and cold.
Pre-pruning work will continue today and hopefully we will be done with all of the 36 rows before April comes along!

The Benefits of Diversification

I am still reading and summarizing the SARE online publicaltion called Manage Insects on Your Farm. Multiple benefits accrue from diversification:

• Manage vegetation in field margins: carefully selected flowering plants or trees in field margins can be important sources of beneficial insects, but they also can modify crop microclimate, add organic matter and produce wood or forage
• Manage plants surrounding fields to manage specific pests: practice perimeter trap cropping
• No till cover crops can yield soil and pest benefits: healthier soils hold moisture, prevent runoff and stretch irrigation dollars

Within this publication is a section dedicated to the grape grower called A Toast to Ecological Grape Growing. This is a case study provided by Zach Berkowitz that encompasses pages 30-33. The take home lesson is the following:

• Use cover crops to enhance beneficials and restrain plant vigor
• Manage riparian vegetation to reduce pests
• Match flowers to resource needs of beneficials

On pages 41-42 is a list of flowering plants that attract natural enemies including Queen Anne's lace, golden rod, yarrow, sweet clover, yellow rocket, wild mustard and many others. Dandelions are an early-season source for nectar and pollen for beneficial insects.
The part of the publication on pages 50-53 are photos of predatory insects and parsitoids. I hope to blog about the predators that we have seen in our vineyard along with photos. In the meantime, do check out the SARE Manage Insects on Your Farm, for their photo gallery.
References:
1. Miguel A. Altieri, Clara I. Nicholls with Marlene A. Fritz, Manage Insects on Your Farm, Published by Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education (SARE), College Park, MD.

Ecological Pest Management

We have been wondering out loud how the number of Japanese Beetles as well as Grape Flea Beetles have really diminished since we saw them in large numbers when we initially planted our vineyard in 2013 all the way through 2018. During those years, we didn't use a pesticide to kill them but picked them off and put them into soapy water in order to kill them. Since 2019 we still have a few grape flea beetles and Japanese beetles, but not in the numbers that having a full vineyard might have portended. Instead, thankfully, we saw fewer beetles each year.
So in order to make sense of this phenomenon, I decided to re-read a SARE online publicaltion called Manage Insects on Your Farm. This publication is not only about insects, but also about soil health and crop health. It is 135 pages long and is subtitled "A Guide to Ecological Strategies".
In the next few blogposts, I'll be taking small bites of the information and summarizing it here. Ecologically based pest management or simply ecological pest management, treats the whole farm as a complex system by mimicking nature’s relationships among different species of plants and animals.
The pillars of ecological pest management can be summarized in this schematic:

The schematic effectively divides the ecological pest management into below ground and above ground principles and practices. The stress is placed on managing instead of controlling pests.
How to increase above ground biodiversity:

• Diversify enterprises by including more species of crops and livestock
• Use legume-based crop rotations and mixed pastures
• Intercrop or strip-crop annual crops where feasible
• Mix varieties of the same crop
• Use varieties that carry many genes rather than just one or two, for tolerating a particular insect or disease
• Emphasize open-pollinated crops over hybrids for their adaptability to local environments and greater genetic diversity
• Grow cover crops in orchards, vineyards and crop fields
• Leave strips of wild vegetation at field edges
• Provide corridors for wildlife and beneficial insects
• Practice agroforestry: where possible, combine trees or shrubs with crops or livestock to improve habitat continuity for natural enemies
• Plant microclimate-modifying trees and native plants as windbreaks or hedgerows
• Provide a source of water for birds and insects
• Leave areas of the farm untouched as habitat for plant and animal diversity

How to increase below ground biodiversity:

• Soil organic matter management
• Soil nutrient management
• Tillage (little or no tillage)
• Efforts to reduce erosion and compaction

References:
1. Miguel A. Altieri, Clara I. Nicholls with Marlene A. Fritz, Manage Insects on Your Farm, Published by Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education (SARE), College Park, MD.