Recent content by dbeck

You don't necessarily need a spinning jenny. I use 14 gauge wire for the catch wires that are used on VSP. The wire comes on spools. I put about about a 3/4 inch pipe through the center of the spool and run 3 spools on the pipe at a time. That pipe gets mounted horizontal on the back of a...

You don't generally need to spray anything after the grapes are in full color and rain should take care of the rest.

What are you spraying for the spotted wing drosophila?

Bob is right. You can buy a lot of what you need at Fleet Farm. Do not ever buy treated posts from any of the box stores though. The chemical they use to treat the wood is not the same as what the places that sell directly to farmers use. By law the stores that sell to the general public...

We could really use some help picking grapes this weekend. We'll have food and beverages for anyone who wants to come help. Even 2 hours would be appreciated. We're about 40 miles north of Minneapolis. If interested, please send me a private message here and I can fill you in on the details...

I just purchased a vinmetrica SC-300. We have a vineyard and need to test the acidity of our grapes before selling them. The only youtube videos I find demonstrate how to test the acidity of wine...not grapes. We picked some grapes and crushed them in a baggie and then I took a 5ml pipette...

Vine spacing is more related to training then fruit production. Vigorous growing vines planted too close together are a mess to maintain.

You can only put so much fruit on a vine and multiple levels of cordons seems a bit excessive to me. You might consider putting your cordons at about 6 feet and then letting your fruit hang down from there same as if you were using a high cordon trellising system.

Looks great They look great! You must be south of us. Its too early here for Marquette yet. The brix are getting there but the PH is too high yet. We'll be looking around the end of September or early October I think.

LOL! I hear you....sounds like a good reason to drink wine!

I find it ironic that you could have lost life and limb but were only concerned about your wine! You, my friend, are inspiring! LOL!

With grapes you can tell if they are under ripe by squeezing them. If the green ones are hard, as I suspect they are, they are not ripe. I would just throw them away. With the others, you can check the brix and TA to determine if they are ripe.

Vines are hard to kill. If everything above ground is dead, it can still push up new shoots from the root system. Vines store all their energy (carbohydrates) in their root system. First, you need to get them out of those tiny pots. A vine should be balanced meaning that however much you see...

DC, Next time I'll do that. The vinmetrica web site has all kinds of issues. Button text not vertically centered and half chopped off, etc. It certainly looks like Internet sales is not their core business.

So you know the conclusion of the story, Rich the owner did refuse to cover the cost of expedited shipping which would have made up for the fact that they didn't ship it originally on Monday as promised. Everyone makes mistakes and its how you respond to a mistake that sets one company apart...