June 1/15
This season
got off to a slow start but we have caught up a bit. The grapes are all tied
and ready to go for the year with extra cane tied down just in case of a late
frost, however, it is now June so a late frost should be out of the question,
but after 2 very cold winters I’m not ready to call an end to frost just yet.
Ontario just recently had a severe frost episode in late May, so it goes to
show it can still happen, and after these 2 years who knows?
The other
reason tying down more fruit than you need is it gives you the option to do
some shoot positioning at an early stage, by removing buds that are too close
and would be remover at a later date anyway.
The high
temperature for today was 9C which is quite low for this time of year,
hopefully it will warm up soon, but we will persevere none the less.
So far the
difference between the 2 Chardonnay clones (95 & 548) seems negligible, the
only difference seems to be in the aforementioned brittleness of the other 2
Chardonnay clones which I mentioned in the previous post. The brittleness seems
to be caused strictly by environmental factors heavy winds from this past year,
a category 2 hurricane as well as high winds throughout the winter. This is
most likely a non-issue or a one time event as it hasn’t happened before,
anyway, enough about that.
Here are a couple of pics of the vines that are now tied down and the 1st leaves
beginning to unfold.
