November 2018

Now that harvest in over, we’ll focus on maintenance in the vineyard. We put some fertilizer down recently, and we plan to water the vines pretty heavily in the coming weeks. About three or four weeks post-harvest, we like to add lots of water to the vineyard so the vines can absorb much-needed nutrients from the soil. The growing process really depletes the nutrients that the plants are holding, so we think it’s a good practice to replenish the nutrients before the vines go dormant. In our vineyard, in an average growing season, the vines will drop their leaves in early December and then go dormant until buds appear in late March.

There’s always lots of post-harvest maintenance to do, so there’s no shortage of tasks to keep us busy. We plan to move our bird netting, make sure it’s clean, and put it away until next year. Also the installation of owl houses provide rodent control just in time for winter.

Ron Buoncristiani