Northern Plains

Welcome to the forum, Greg. Sounds like you are embarking on a great escapade. Good luck. As for raising capital, have you considered an IPO?

Richard. I just finished reading your long thread. Wow, you've done a ton of work. Very informative and the best resource for understanding how to grow grapes in our zone I've ever seen. Not only that, it was riveting like a good novel you can't put down. Your trial data is invaluable. Thanks. I'll certainly be seeking your help and insight as I move forward. Seems like I need to seriously consider 4AK for my grapes.

Farmer, too bad. I would love to visit your vineyard sometime.

Rocky, not a bad idea. Though the farm part would not work out as ND does not allow corporate farming.

GreginND said:

Richard. I just finished reading your long thread. Wow, you've done a ton of work. Very informative and the best resource for understanding how to grow grapes in our zone I've ever seen. Not only that, it was riveting like a good novel you can't put down. Your trial data is invaluable. Thanks. I'll certainly be seeking your help and insight as I move forward. Seems like I need to seriously consider 4AK for my grapes.

Click to expand...

The 4 Arm Kniffen was but stage one of the trials. The new trial is even more exciting with an even larger difference seen with my new modified Geneva Double Curtain system. I will have hopefully great data collection this year with the most comprehensive trial undertaken with Cold Climate grapes. It is being funded partially this year through a Northeast SARE Grant. With 432 vines involved in the trial on 4 training systems with four varieties with 3 repetitions of each, on a variety of soils, it is poised to lend some great information. This past year even with the tropical storms destroying much of the crop on them, the Mod GDC had up to a 250 percent yield increase over any other system. Also the quality was as high or higher as measured by brix, pH and TA. Much much more will be following. I have a researcher from Cornell working with me, the head of Extension Viticulture at Cornell (leader of the Northern Grapes project) and several Extension reps including the head of NENY Fruit Program. On April 2 we are having a pruning seminar here to use the trial vineyard to demonstrate pruning on 4 different training systems. I enjoy it.
Thanks for reading.

Thanks Richard. Do you have some good drawings or pictures of your MDGC and how you are training the vines? I would certainly appreciate it.

I haven't been letting a lot of that information out yet since it is still in development, but I will post a few pictures for you in the next day or so- just no time to hunt them up right now.

Here is a basic schematic of the concept. I have modified it a bit, but this gives you a rough idea. I will post the pictures later.

Here are a few pictures of the mod gdc with some early growth and showing the basic bracket and then some at the end of the growing season a few weeks before harvest. Those vines received no combing or leaf pulling. The amazing thing was the extra crop over the three other systems in the trial with less work. Now at pruning I am seeing about the same pruning weights over all four systems. That shows the vigor overall was less with the mod gdc per foot of canopy, resulting is less shoot growth and potential shading.

Richard, you are a wealth of information. This helps a lot. I can't read the dimensions on your graph. So you are training the vines like I show below? It looks like you are brining two trunks up from the base, but some look like you may be brining more. Does it matter? Also, what direction are your rows running? I think it would get the best sun exposure with an E-W row and the uneven wires facing south. I have a spot where I could do that. Is it better or worse in N-S rows?

Greg when I took those pictures last year I trained up what I needed to to get the four arms- some twotrunks and a few, more. This year as I prune, I am going back to one or two, depending on where I can grab a good arm from. Last year I let some extra canes form that I could use this year for training. I purposely didn't show exact dimensions because I don't want some manufacturer stealing the idea and I provide them the information they want to do it! Check for a PM. Here is a picture showing a Mn1200 vine pruned this year. Not super pretty, but it will give good structure. This was one I snapped the other day. I will be getting some more showing the preferred trunks and so on soon. I made the holder for a 5x8 foot banner I have to go on a lawn tractor cart for a backdrop.

Terrific. Thanks so much.

Welcome to a great forum! Lots of good people and information here.. Have fun!

Well, a bit of an update. We are planning on closing on the farm next week Friday. We are excited about that. The financing has become complicated. Since the farmhouse has a new addition which was not completed by the owner no mortgage company will give us a loan. It has to be finished. My local bank is willing to work with us with a shorter loan but we have to put up all our extra cash I was going to use to start the winery and vineyard Into an escrow account to be used to finish the addition before anything else. I'm afraid it's going to delay the winery/vineyard side of things. So I should have plenty of time to plan and prep things well.