It’s been a while - where shall I start?  My last posts were from my trip to Italy.  On return there was heaps to do.  I will try to bring you all up to date with what has happended over the past months in the now famous  Gherardi Viognier/Merlot vineyard.

July:  Here in Margaret River it was extremely wet with 186mm rainfall over some 18 wet days. The weather was not conducive to be out pruning, so I decided not to!

August:  What a contrast, dry cold mornings with sunny days - fantastic pruning weather.  Managed to get it all done by the end of the month.  For the month we received 47mm over 7 wet days - well below average.

Pruning also saw the preparation of a further 1,500 Merlot vines for grafting over to Viognier.  Here the vines are cut back hard in order to encourage shoots along the trunk.  A strong shoot will be selected and grafted into later in November.  I will describe this new technique at the time. 

Even the local parrots survey the changes which have occurred around the place. 

 

Bud wood was collected and is being stored at around 3C for use later. 

September:  Midway through the month saw the first signs of bud burst in earlier pruned Viognier.  The usual ‘arch caned’ vines again show good bud burst possibilities.

This technique together with a high nutrition spray prior to bud burst has improved the percentage buds bursting significantly this year.

Higher up the hill where temperatures are generally warmer, bud burst is earlier.  Actually, I was caught out and forgot that the kangaroos do like succulent shoots.  They don/t mess around and all potential fruit, on these vines, has been eaten!!

Over the past few days the day time temperatures have ceratinly risen and it appears as though not only spring but early signs of summer have arrived.

Have we missed the equinoxal storms usually experienced around this time?  Good question.  We can do without gales, hail and horizontal rain when lush vine shoots are emerging.

I have fingers and everything else crossed.

Vienman

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 15th, 2008 at 9:08 pm and is filed under Vineman, Gherardi Vineyard, Season Predictions. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.