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2006 Third Leaf
3-22-06 Well here we go again with another year. Definitely starting out differently this year as we have been in a serious drought for some time now. I finally broke down and watered a couple of times at the beginning of February and I'm afraid I may have waited too long about giving the vines a good drink. The last 185 plants I set out last spring look pretty rough and I'm thinking I'll be lucky if half of them bud out. I do see signs of new buds on a few and on the older stock but only time will tell how much damage there is. Here I was looking forward to a good harvest, and it could still happen maybe. A front finally settled in over this past weekend and we got a nice slow soaking rain for 3 days. I don't have a rain gauge , but I think we got between 2 and 3 inches total and none of it was run off. Turned off cold again too, but the 7 day forecast is showing temps back into the mid 60's and nights hovering in the 40's. Had to replace my well pump set up a couple of weeks ago and that deal cost me a little over 1500 bucks so now I have to postpone enlarging my irrigation pond till better times. The last 6 months has been a disaster for things to give up the ghost and quit around here. Everything from the well to wife's car and washing machine. Hopefully the bad luck has run its course for awhile. 5-21-06 Well, I don't know what to say here except major problems have developed in the vineyard. Of the 650 third leaf cabernets only 119 budded like they were supposed to. Nada on the rest but most of the others are starting a new sucker from the ground, which is good. At least it's better than being completely dead. It sets me back a year for my first harvest of any quantities. I have to go through the process of training them up to the cordon all over again. I'm sure the drought situation here had some part in them not budding and we had some 90 degree days in Jan and February that screwed up their sap flow. We got 3 pretty hard freezes after the 90 degree weather and I'm thinking most of the problem came from that, but don't know just what the deal is. Very discouraging for sure, but that's farming for ya. Looks like a good crop on the 119 that did bud, but I haven't decided just yet what I'll do with them. Hopefully, next year will be different. Talked to some other growers in this area and it seems some of them are seeing the same problems. That tells me it's not all my fault at least. :-)
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