Vine Watch

I see the vines

2009-02-09T00:00:00.001+02:00

resized

I see the moon and so do the vines

2009-02-08T23:58:00.004+02:00

the moon is a balloon ( a strange word - doesn't look right with any spelling)

Vinerama

2009-01-24T13:08:00.000+02:00

Kubota Rescue

2009-01-23T23:53:00.004+02:00

Vinewatch day 69 - 12th of January 2009

2009-01-12T10:42:00.002+02:00

Thought Emma might like to know:

69 days; 323mm of rain/irrigation; 243 hrs of good sunshine (whatever that is).

All vines tubed; approx 30% now out of the tubes.

Will start pruining, training and de-tubing (if there is such a verb) at day 80).

Weather prospect is still hot and sunny. We could do with some rain to top up the dam as each irrigation now is 18M3.

We have done a 'weeding' and are now doing a bit of byudy tidying, though I can't see it ever looking like one of those manicured yards in Franschoek. We would need 3 Zakreys.

The averages:

October

Average Temp
16.9(Max 30.9/Min 6.4)
Average Wind
13.9km/h;prev. SE
Average Daily Sun
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
22.5(Max 34.1/Min13.8)
17.3km/h;prev ESE
3.7hrs; max of 1368Watts/M2
January to 12th
21.8(Max30.9/Min16.2)
16.8km/h; prev SE
3.25hrs; max of 1384Watts/M2

Jake Prunes

2009-01-11T11:33:00.002+02:00

Am struggling with the blogger technology

Jake Gives a Pruning Master Class

2009-01-11T10:00:00.001+02:00

The Fleet

2009-01-01T22:59:00.001+02:00

Looks like a war grave yard?

2009-01-01T22:54:00.001+02:00

I hope not.

Christmas Day 2008

2008-12-31T16:51:00.001+02:00

New Year’s Eve 2008 – All tubed up

2008-12-31T16:10:00.002+02:00

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?

2008-12-31T13:43:00.002+02:00

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

2008-12-25T11:50:00.005+02:00

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

2008-12-21T18:56:00.000+02:00

Thought you might like to see….

2008-12-15T18:28:00.001+02:00

…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

2008-12-15T17:28:00.001+02:00

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

2008-12-14T15:46:00.002+02:00

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

2008-12-11T11:28:00.002+02:00

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

2008-12-08T09:36:00.008+02:00

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.

What a Lot of Chickens

2008-11-29T07:15:00.003+02:00

It's Saturday 29th of November 2008: 7.15am.

We've had a strange old week. The anchors and cordon wires have progressed well and we are happy. The dam water stays determinely in the dam. All attempts to get the pump and the very very expensive filtration system working are unsuccesful. We do have municipal water however but have been plaqued again by a succession of leaks and pipe joint failures. Zakrey, our Rastafarian vineyard manager is becoming something of an expert pipefitter, I am tempted to award him a certificate of competence.

The vines look good though. The growth is phenomenal in just 25 days. All have budded and we already have at least 2800 looking like chickens. The eccentric Jake Easton, from Lismore, is very fond of the vine chicken. I'm not sure if this is the correct technical term but Jake insists and I dont arque. Yeah, I know everybody thinks I'm eccentric BUT Jake beats me in the eccentricity stakes hands down. Anybody who signs his emails 'Winemaker and Poet' .... well???? None of our other friends are eccentric. are they? Nah! ... ummm .... possibly Nigel and Alan D and well all of the Alans, Trevor can be strange..... Collo is fairly normal -apart from that not liking anybody trait and that poetry and painting thing he does....... all our children are normal though ... YEAH that's ok then.

This is what rows of chickens look like. These are a couple of the rows in Block D, the first block to be planted on 3 Nov so techically(?) 26 days old.
They've had 208mm of rain since planting plus 25mm of irrigation water and 85 hours of sun. You can see some of the smaller rocks that we have had to outwit and also the latest excavation required to repair the most recent leak. I will tidy it up soon.

At 6 this morning (hence the grey sky) this is what vine VCR12V1 looked like. I've labelled the snap (for the technically interested person). He/she looks well though. There's a close up below of VCR12V4. taken with flash, to show off the leaf growth to best advantage..... thinks... hope he/she isn't affected by the flash... will that affect our organic status?

The trellis system is stainless steel, supplied by the quite normal (compared to Jake!) Jamii Hamlin of ecostake (I know. Anybody who spells their name with 2 i's can't be normal). Collo spotted the product in a farming magazine on one of his dental appointments back in 2007. Iin Feb this year I met up with Jamii and much to his surprize (I wouldn't let him finish his sales pitch!)

I bought it on the spot and we installed it ourselves - I mean I did a row with Zakrey and he did the rest assisted by whoever we could rely on to turn up. It's a much more humane way of trellising. The anchoring and the fitting of the cordon wire for 3000 metres has only taken a week for 2-3 men. I imagine the 6 strand plastic canopy support system should only take a couple of days. Forget all that banging in of wooden posts and a load of guys with those big pliers and staples.

The vines don't really care one way or the other but I think its better for them.

The only difficult bit is the tying off of the cordon wire BUT Jamii's patented fixing system made it easy for Ralph (Jake's foreman) to show off his knotting.

More knots next week - now back to the plumbing.

First Buds

2008-11-21T15:29:00.000+02:00

I'm Block A Row 10 Vine 8.

Planted on 5 Nov 2008- so am now 16 days old.
I'm a Viognier vine - clone VR1A (apparently part of original Viognier brought in to SA) on R110 rootstock. There are only 400 of me in this vineyard.
I've had 205mm of water already and 55 hours of sunshine.
I have quite a few buds but no leaves yet.

I'm Block B Row 4 Vine 4.

Planted on 5 Nov 2008- so am now 16 days old.
I'm a Viognier vine - clone VR642C on R110 rootstock. There are 2600 of me in this vineyard.
I have also had 205mm of water and 55 hours of sunshine.
I have some leaves. The black pipe is my drip feeder

I'm Block C Row 8 Vine 12.

Planted on 4 Nov 2008- so am now 18 days old. I'm a Viognier vine - clone VR642C on R110 rootstock. There are 2600 of me in this vineyard.I have also had 205mm of water and 55 hours of sunshine.I have lots of leaves. The black pipe is also my drip feeder

I'm Block D Row 4 Vine 20.

Planted on 3 Nov 2008- so am now 19 days old. I'm a Viognier vine - clone VR642C on R110 rootstock. There are 2600 of me in this vineyard.I have also had 205mm of water and 55 hours of sunshine.I have lots of leaves and am already very strong as you can see. The black pipe is also my drip feeder. As you can see I have rather rocky mulch (like all of the vines in this yard). They will keep me warm and also keep the weeds at bay.

Vine Watch

2008-11-20T23:55:00.001+02:00

The Vineyard is divided into 2 fields each of 1 hectare. Each field holds approx 3000 vines. The field to the right (as you look from the house) is Viognier.(V) and the field to the left will be Temperanilla (T)
The rows of vines are split into 4 blocks each of 750 vines. The blocks are labelled A, B, C, D and the rows 1 to whatever in each block and the vines 1 to whatever in each row.
SO - Field V; Block A; Row 2; Vine 10 equates to the code VAR2V10; i.e. the 10th vine in the 2nd row of block A of the Viognier field.

In this blog there will be pictures and updates on the vine of the month.

We'll publish a map of all the vines and if you have a favourite - such as VAR2V10, please send an email to VAR2V10@thedawes.net and we will oblige with a picture and update on health and progress.

Happy vine watch