Leaves!

[SLOweather]

I've been doing a lot of research, and realized that it's probably too late this season to order and plant any wine grapes.

In the past, we have grown Vitus Californica 'Roger's Red' native grapes for decoration. A couple of years ago, we got 10 lbs or so of grapes and made jelly with them.

I've been growing them from cuttings now for several years, and, just for fun and for something to watch, planted a few along the fence of our proposed vineyard. These are probably fall 2010 cuttings rooted and then potted out last year. They are not very big, maybe 6-10 inches tall.

I planted them about 5 or 6 weeks ago, and put 1' cut-down tree tubes over them to protect them and give a little greenhouse effect. Today, Markie (our Shih Tzu/Pom/Chihuahua) and I tromped over the hill to check them out. All of them have leaves and look very vigorous!

Woo hoo! The tromp also made me notice that the microclimate on the back hill is probably well-suited for a vineyard. It is more sheltered from the on-shore winds that the house and some of the rest of our property. I think I'll stick a new weather station in the middle of the vineyard area and compare it to the one at the house to see how the wind varies.

 

[Deezil]

Whats it take to put in a weather system? What all does it keep track of? Appreciate any info on it ya can provide, im just starting to look into weather tracking instruments, as i delve deeper into this obsession.

 

[SLOweather]

Whats it take to put in a weather system? What all does it keep track of? Appreciate any info on it ya can provide, im just starting to look into weather tracking instruments, as i delve deeper into this obsession.

Well, you've come to the right person to ask. I've had SLOweather.com on the Internet since 1998, and have purchased, speced, and/or installed well over 15 Davis Instruments weather stations. I also developed WeatherElement.com as an easy way to put your weather on a web site.

Basically, all you need is a weather station. They range from low end consumer grade stations that might cost $100 to professional/industrial grade stations that can cost multiple kilodollars.

I use and recommend only Davis Instruments stations. Davis is based in Hayward, CA, as is their tech support. Their warranties are liberal, and their repair fees very reasonable. They are the best of the consumer/prosumer weatherstations around, IMO.

Their least expensive station is the Vantage Vue:

The Vue is wireless, so you don't have to run a cable from the outdoor unit to the indoor console. However, it is not expandable.

The wireless Vantage Pro 2 or Pro 2 Plus is what I recommend to anyone serious about watching their weather.

First of all, the Pro 2 can be ordered with solar and UV sensors (Pro 2 Plus) or you can add them later. The solar sensor enables the console to calculate evapotranspiration, which is an aid to determining when to water your crops.

The wireless Pro 2 will also receive weather data from up to 7 additional wireless stations. The available stations are temperature only, temperature/humidity, and soil moisture-soil temp/leaf wetness-leaf temp. There's also a wireless transmitter for the anemometer/wind vane if you need to really separate it from the outdoor sensors.

I have a wireless Pro 2, with:

An extra temperature/humidity sensor down in our woods. It's interesting to see how much the temp can vary from that up at our home. When there is a low inversion layer the temperature down there can be 10-15°F lower than the house, and hiking down there (100' lower and 300' laterally) passing through the thermocline is very noticable.

A temperature station with the probe dunked in our spa.

A leaf wetness/temperature station with a temperature probe buried in the compost pile. I bury it when I add material and/or turn the pile, and watch the temperature. I can usually get the pile up to >130°F, where it stays for a few days. When it starts to drop off, I know it's time to remove some compost, or turn it or add material.

A soil moisture/temperature station. right now this is by the greenhouse with the soil probe in a raised bed. I think I'll move it to the future vineyard to monitor soil moisture and temperature there.

I also have a second temperature/humidity station down at the bottom of the proposed vineyard.

All of those stations can be seen on the consoles up at the house.

There are also computer interfaces available for the consoles, and Davis and others sell programs for putting the data on a web page similar to www.sloweather.com. Or, our WeatherElement Data Hub is a plug and play hardware interface that sends data to our server for display and archiving on a page like this without the hassles of a 24/7 computer, web site building, web hosting and the rest.

Creekside Farms

rainmanweather.com has the best prices for Davis stuff that I've found on the net. Either register on the site or call Rob and ask for best pricing. Davis has a Minimum Advertised Price policy with their dealers. The dealers can't advertise lower, but can sell lower.

Rob sells the Vue for $257.95 (list $395.00), the wireless Pro2 for $385.99 (list $595.00) and the Pro2 Plus with solar and UV for $635.98 (list $995.00)

There is an active weather stations forum at www.wxforum.net, also.

Let me know if you have any questions.

 

[robie]

That's a great idea.

Do most of the vineyards around you utilize a special root stock that's different from the actual grape vines?

 

[SLOweather]

Whats it take to put in a weather system? What all does it keep track of? Appreciate any info on it ya can provide, im just starting to look into weather tracking instruments, as i delve deeper into this obsession.

Sorry, I missed a couple of your questions:

After you get a station, you need a post to mount it on. All weather station siting is a compromise, and very few can meet all of the siting recommendations. (IMO, to do so would require placing the station in the middle of a turf football field without a stadium . )

The main sensor unit should be in the open, on a post 4-5' over grass. The anemometer/wind vane should be high in the air away from obstructions. Chimneys and roof eaves are poor sites for any weather instruments, although on a post over a gable end isn't TOO bad.

A good weather station should measure the common weather variables: wind speed and direction, outdoor temperature and humidity, rain fall, and barometric pressure. The wind speed should be sampled as often as possible. Every 2.5 seconds is about the fastest, but some cheap stations only sample every 15 seconds, so a lot of gusts are missed.

Most stations include indoor temperature and humidity. Better stations might include solar radiation and UV.

The best stations will also receive data from other sensors for display; more temperatures and humidities, soil moisture, leaf wetness, etc.

From those data, a lot of derived data can be stored or calculated by the console or an attached computer: various highs and lows, average wind speed, wind run, rain rate, baro trend, evapotranspiration, heating and cooling degree days, chilling hours, and any other calculations, totals, averages, or indexes that can be calculated from weather data. for instance, I've written scripts that run on my server that calculate several fire weather indexes for SLOweather.com.

Based on your thread about Growing Degree days, I think I'll add a script to calculate that. That should be fun!

 

[SLOweather]

That's a great idea.

Do most of the vineyards around you utilize a special root stock that's different from the actual grape vines?

i don't know for sure, but based on my readings so far, I would bet that they do, either for disease resistance or drought resistance.

 

[Runningwolf]

Great info, thanks for posting. I've always wanted one and looked at a bunch of them but I'm afraid it would be one of those nolvelty things for me that would wear off in a few months.