Hi Cowboy
We live at Lovell and have about 400 vines 16 rows with 25 per row. They are 275 of Frontinac and 125 of LaCresent( I think) my wife is the expert and I am just the farmer. our vines were 4 years old this last summer and we got 90 gallons of red juice and 6 gallon of white. 5 of the rows were ony 2-3 years old and didn't produce.
We have made about every mistake we could because we learned at a vineyard in Yakama WA where they had heritage(European) vines and we put in hybrids.
The first year we put on grow tubes and left them on during the winter -35 deg and we lost about half the white and 35 percent of the red . We should have taken the tubes off and they would have hardened better,We had 100 of each that year.
The next summer we replanted and added 25 white and 75 red. The next year we added 100 red.
We put the cordon on the second wire and tried to make them grow up to the 3rd and 4th wire for 3 years and then went to a Univ of Wy seminar and found that with hybrids we should put the cordon on the top wire and let them grow down so this past summer we started retraining and they grew much better.
We put the rows 9 ft apart and planted a vine every 4 ft. should have planted them 6 ft apart. The soil is very fertile and the vines very hardy. We used steel post every 20 ft which worked well except I used steel post on the ends and the wire tension and vine load bent the end post so I have to replace them with wooden this spring.
We bottled 32 bottles of white today and have about 90 bottles of red We still have 45 gallons in the fermenter---anyone want some
Larry & Nancey
Lovell WY