Christmas Day 2008

 

New Year’s Eve 2008 – All tubed up

It’s taken 20 days to make and tube the 3000 vines. We lost a week over Christmas (and the weekends!) so really only 12 working days. It’s not bad going, considering that Zakrey has done the last 1500 or so single handed… well almost – I did about 20 and made a 1000 tubes. Zakrey is worth his little Rasta weight in gold (moroccan?).

The statistics:
4 kilometres of tetrapak – weighing in at ~ a third of a tonne (360kg)
4 kilometres of sisal twine
40,000 staples
6 staple guns (4 defunct!)
3 pairs of scissors
0 cuts or grazes
Personally I walked 5 kilometres distributing tubes to the yard; and drove 520 kms to collect tetrapak from Kaap Agri in Grabouw as we/they ran out of the stuff 3 times.

I estimate that we already have 10% of the vines ‘out of the tube’.

See Di demonstrating the vine’s ability to recognise the cordon wire.
Tomorrow is a holiday (for Zakrey) and then on Friday the 2nd of January 2009 we start to weed and prune and train.

Who knows where the vine goes?

Block A	The lowest/nearest the dam	Has 12 Rows of Viognier
	Rows 1 to 4 and 12 approx 350 vines in total	are VR642C on R110 rootstock
	Rows 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10,11 approx 400 vines	are VR1A on R110 (original SA stock)
Block B	Next Lowest	Has 7 Rows of Viognier
	approx 750 vines	are VR642C on R110 rootstock
Block C	Next to the top	Has 7 Rows of Viognier
	approx 750 vines	are VR642C on R110 rootstock
Block D	top most block	Has 11 Rows of Viognier
	approx 750 vines	are VR642C on R110 rootstock

Total of 3000 vines in 37 rows and 4 blocks.
Riveting stuff I hear Emma say.

You Tubes

Thought you might like to see the results of 10 days in Grow Tubes.

It's also 52 days since the vines were planted.
The update on progress is that we have managed to get 2600 of the little beggars into grow tubes. We'll get the rest in early next week. It's the devil's own job getting people to come to work at this time of the year - isn't it Jake? Grow tube fitting has taken much much longer than expected and also much much more tetrapak. It's serendipity that the inner part of the tube is silvered which makes them act like sun tubes so that they don't get starved of sunshine whilst in their micro climates. In the last 12 days we've had 2mm of rain and the vines have had 3 irrigations of 5mm each time. This time the irrigation has been from the dam - hurray at last it all works - thanks to the long suffering Johan Barnard (and Zakrey of course).

The stats are: 270mm of water; 189 hours of good sunshine (whatever good sunshine is)

We start weeding and then pruning and training the vine to the cordon wire next week. Then when the vine is strong enough (pencil thick!) we'll strip the growtubes. It's all go here at Swallow Hill

swallows, vines, growtubes

Thought you might like to see….

…a picture of the other member of the gngbc – Jake Easton.
Eccentric? I think not.

Greyton Novelty Goatee Beard Club Member #2

Viognier – The Plan

Here’s what we do each year for the next 3 years- plus the grow tubes of course in year 1, and - there will be 2 shoots going for the cordon wire. The loser dies.Brutal stuff!
I haven’t drawn in the trellis wires and to get an idea of scale- the cordon wire is at 1 metre and the 3 double trellis wire are at 300mm centres above the cordon. For those of you thinking in imperial (Christian units - as one of my mentors used to say): Cordon at roughly a yard and the other wires at 1 foot centres.

I didn’t know any of this 2 weeks ago. I’d read a couple of books over the last 18 months, but nothing really sinks in until you see the real thing and someone like Jake enthuses. We are at 50% of year 1 –if that makes sense?

14 Dec 2008: 40 days and 40 nights

Headline statistics for the vines are 253mm of rain/irrigation and 153 hours of good sunshine (whatever good sunshine is).

The weather has been really really hot and is picking up early for summer- see table .. err… below

	Average Temp	Average Wind	Average Daily Sun
October	16.9 (Max 30.9/Min 6.4)	13.9km/h; prev. SE	1.8hrs; max of 1234 Watts/M2
November	18.9 (Max 30.8/Min 11.7)	17.6km/h; prev ESE	3.27hrs; max of 1376 Watts/M2
December to 14th	23.7 (Max 34.1/Min13.8)	17.5km/h; prev ESE	4.58hrs; max of 1342Watts/M2

The September average temperature was 12.4 deg C by the way.

It’s Sunday and I still can’t get the dam irrigation to work – so it will have to be municipality water again on Monday night unless the long suffering Johan Barnard of Overberg Agri can sort me out.

Half the vines have now got their grow tubes in place and we await the return of Jake’s chaps tomorrow to finish the pruning and fit the rest of the tubes though I still have to find some more grow tube materials (excess Tetrapak – this time wine boxes)

The growth of this European weed still amazes me though you can see that some of the indigenous weeds are already competing.

Fingers crossed that we get no more leaks and that the pump will work soon.

Is there anybody out there who knows anything about the management of terrapins or conditioning of brackish waters? Please contact me - brian@thedawes.net

Novel use of materials and resources

Yet another eye-catching title I hear you say. What have they done now?
Jake and Sam have found a use for excess tetrapak stock card and so have we now. Tetrapak what? Let me explain.The young vines need some protection and help to get to the cordon wire. J & S found that the material that milk cartons are made from - tetrapak - basically waxed card is ideal. The excess bit seems to be 'end of line' printed stuff for example branded Clover Milk or Soya Milk. The waxed card is rolled out and cut to 1 metre lengths and then stapled into a tube and then popped over the 2 shoots of each vine. They look very cute in their Clover Milk livery now. Not as pretty as rows of green vines but they'll only be on for a couple of months. Photogenic? Maybe not - but I'll post some pics later.
The other bit of innovation is the use of cattle ear tags to label the rows. There has to be a pun in there but for the moment I am at a loss to think of one.

No longer play chicken

8 Dec 2008

Another week of progress with the usual setbacks and leaps forward. We were away most of the week (in Die Hell) more of that in the other blog. The vines are now a week older and the anchors and cordon wires are complete. We have some losses - about 5%. BUT we have spares and Zakrey will move them in soon.

The vines have had another 35 hours of sunshine and 5mm of irrigation BUT it is very very hot - it hit 34 C yesterday so we may have to do some therapeutic cooling.

For those of you keeping graphs the totals are 248 mm of water and 130.7 hours of good sunshine. We still have no dam water (from the dam that is). Maybe Wednesday?

Zakrey (our Rasta farm manager) is watering the vines that we think may need some help.

Half of the vines have lost their chicken status and have been pruned to 2 shoots heading for the cordon wire.

Zakrey is showing off the 2 shoots in this photo - am not sure which vine it is Row 1 in Block D vine 22 I think.

The 'rock mulch' is very evident in the last photo.