Vineyard in the Granite State

Sounds like you had your share of bad luck yesterday.............. Better luck is coming.
I had three moose go around the vineyard 2 years ago. They don't like the trellis wires.

NH Rocks

Those rocks are what we would say add to the wines terroir
Adding great mine reality to the taste

A sip of New Hampshire - my daughter lives near Derry and of course we visit often. Wherever we go we like to see the local wineries - and compare them to our Finger Lakes wines. We visited a local winery there and found out all the juice came from California and Italy. I have nothing against those areas and do enjoy their wines but I was looking for a sip of wine with a little NH soul in it. When I asked they told me grapes would not grow in NH !

Bull - there are apple orchards everywhere and if they can survive then so can a large number of grape varieties.

Happy planting - the rock harvest looks fantastic

DFoley even here in true Upstate NY we cannot grow Finger Lakes Wines and I don't try. Other vineyards inport the juice, but I only make wine from grapes I truly grow in Northeastern NY State way up near Montreal and Burlington Vt. It is a challenge but they do well here.

Rocking Out

Here's a sample of what we picked for 4- 100' rows. Lots of unique flavor there.

Out of the Blue!

Vines we put in the ground on May 18th have escaped their blue tubes!

LaCrescents on 6-22-2013

Putting in Trellis Posts

My permanent companion and I (no-not the John Deere) started constructing the trellis for the upper vineyard today. More boring into rocks and a lot of pry bar and manual labor, but these vines are all coming out of their blue tubes and growing fast. so they are going to appreciate a little support.

NH Wineries

dfoley said:

Those rocks are what we would say add to the wines terroir
Adding great mine reality to the taste

A sip of New Hampshire - my daughter lives near Derry and of course we visit often. Wherever we go we like to see the local wineries - and compare them to our Finger Lakes wines. We visited a local winery there and found out all the juice came from California and Italy. I have nothing against those areas and do enjoy their wines but I was looking for a sip of wine with a little NH soul in it. When I asked they told me grapes would not grow in NH !

Bull - there are apple orchards everywhere and if they can survive then so can a large number of grape varieties.

Happy planting - the rock harvest looks fantastic

Click to expand...

http://www.nhwineryassociation.com/members.html
Most NH vineyards produce and market wines from grapes they grow on site, but almost all also buy wholesale grapes as well.

7-15-2013

I hated to do it, but I had to resort to spraying the rows with Roundup. Turns out that wild blackberries (my nemesis) just love it- it eliminates all their competition. So I just finished hand pulling them. Now to hit up the bottle of Osteo Bi-Flex tablets!
On a side note, I've found that a product called Organicide, which is primarily sesame oil mixed with fish oil, works very well on Japanese beetles, not well on Rose Chafers, and sort of OK as a fungicide. I'm assuming at some point I will have to pull out the big guns, but for now will try to stick with organic sprays.

The rows look nice.

We have wild blackberries coming in from the wood line in back of our house. I was going to hit them with glyphosate - was it not effective for you?

Also - I just hit my veggie garden with Organicide yesterday. It's certainly not as strong as the more potent chemical cocktails, but it helps and is definitely better for you.

The blackberries thought the Roundup was just another summer rain...

Late July Vineyard Update

The heavy rains in July and then a 95+ heatwave really took a toll on the 1 year vines in the blue tubes. Lots of wilting and mold problems, so we took the tubes off a couple weeks early and they seem to like that. The Japanese Beetles also hit full force in July. We have been hand picking them at the rate of 100-200/day between the 1 year and 2 year old vines for a month. The number of skeletonized leaves on the 1 year vines did much more damage than on the second year vines. The Marechal Foch fared better than the Louise or the Prairie Stars.

2nd Year Vines

The lower vineyard with the 2 year vines was mowed and trimmed today-hopefully for the last time this season. The few clusters we left on to mature are slowly ripening. The LaCrescent appears to be slightly ahead. The Marquette's are still green.

looks really good!

Japanese Beetle Damage

They were having mating orgies this year. We've been hand picking them every morning and night for a month.

Marquette Verasion

Marquette verasion on August 18th on a two year vine.

Brix on 8/27/2013

Took some brix readings after some very nice late August weather.
Marquette- 15
LaCrescent- 15.5
Prairie Star- 17

Hope to see them climb into the 20's in the coming week or so.

Tried spraying with a mix of hot pepper/garlic/soap to control the Japanese beetle infestation. We had been getting 100-200/day (hand picked into detergent water). After spraying I got 39, so it had some effect. We ordered beneficial nematodes Hb to cut down the grub population. We'll see what effect that has next year.

total rookie question:

If you introduced some chickens when the grapes were green, would they eat the beetles before the grapes? Too late for an experiment? ALso, chicken poop makes great fert, and if it doesn't work...Coque au vain!!

Thanks for sharing the pics.

Chickens indeed will eat Japanese Beetles- if they could get to them 3-5' up on the vines! I hope the 5 million beneficial nematodes we spread yesterday will interrupt their life cycle enough to get the population under control.

3-5 feet, eh? So you need to get yourself an emu....

For what it is worth, consider getting some bantam chickens and trying it out. They will have no problem getting up to the 3-5' trellis, and will be light enough, I suspect, to do no harm to anything. Also, they produce eggs, and failing that, are tasty in themselves.

What sort of nematodes? Are they a predator/parasite of the beetles in their native range, or are they a GMO beastie? Just curious. I am a biologist and invasive species issues have always interested me.