A great father's day

Yesterday was fathers day. A busy but enjoyable day. The morning was spent with my wife and kids setting up our Church's Vacation Bible School. The afternoon was time in the garden, planting a lime tree and a lemon tree (limoncello anyone) and spraying the vines with sulfer. As I was spraying, I realized just how heavy the crop is this year. Even the row that normally does not produce much fruit (I think that row was damaged by gophers but not 100% sure) had terrific fruit set. In fact, most of the fruit is about the size of peas and the bunches are very large. Perhaps the cooler than normal spring and early summer were kind to the fruiting process.

With my vines

Summer has finally arrived. No more rain and 80 degree days. While spraying sulpher on the vines today, I realized that the powdery mildew had not taken hold, the fruit set much better this year and the number of bunches seems to be much higher this year. All of this is likely due to three factors, I heavily pruned the vines this year, a very cold and wet spring (we had rain into early June, how is that for global warming?) and I have been watering since the rains have stopped. I did not have time to fertilize with manure this year but this does not seem to have affected the vines in the least. All in all a great start to this years growing season. Now, if Bacus can repeat the cold (less the rain) weather this fall, maybe the grapes will hang for a long slow maturation!

We're back

Sometimes life can get in the way of a good time. After completely missing the wine growing and making season of 2008/2009, we are back and ready for the 2010 harvest.
Our vines in the DubC are growing vigorously now that the weather has warmed with great fruit set. In fact, this year, I could not spot a bad bunch. We'll have to drop fruit this year to keep our quality standards.
Spotted powdery mildew on our Zucchini and will begin our sulfur spraying regimen this week.