Fava beans and Chardonnay.

This is not a post about a food and wine pairing.  No, it is a post about the incessant rain that northern California is experiencing and the fact that I don't like it.  However, a neighbouring vineyard's cover crop is enjoying it immensely.  Every cloud has a silver lining, or something like that.

Week of weeds: Day 2.

Common yarrow (Achillea millefolium), or just yarrow, is generally a very pleasant plant to have around either in a vineyard or as an ornamental. A drought resistant perennial, and tolerant of poor soils, yarrow can be a valuable component of vineyard cover crops as it attracts many beneficial, predatory insects, including; ladybirds, parasitic wasps and tachinid flies.
In Vinoland the yarrow is not growing near the vines, but is instead flourishing on a slope above the house.  In fact, most of the interesting wildflowers in Vinoland grow together on the same slope (currently covered in hop clover, rose clover and wild hyacinth).  Yarrow has a large taproot which could really benefit the poor soil in some parts of the vineyard.  If only I could coax this winsome plant to move downhill.

Now that's a cover crop!

Why plant silly (and potentially harmful) mustard as a cover crop when you could sow every other row in the vineyard with California poppies (Eschscholzia Californica)?  Whilst poppies don't have the biomass of a legume, for instance, they do have a large taproot which could help condition the vineyard soil somewhat.  Besides, they just look gorgeous.

Frost season.

Having a cover crop in a vineyard is generally a good thing for the vineyard's health.  However, a tall cover crop (like the 5' tall mustard in the above photograph) can artificially raise the vineyard floor, thus encouraging frost to settle on the new plane which is what the top of the cover crop has now effectively become. Unfortunately, that can be right in the bud/fruit zone. Napa had a fairly hard frost event yesterday. Currently, it's 31 degrees F as I type and the roof of Vinoland's barn is white with frost - it faces west.

The folks at Far Niente mowed down their cover crop yesterday. Just when the bell beans, field peas and vetch had started to bloom and look very pretty, the rain ended, took the clouds with it and opened the door to usher in frost season.  A disked, vegetation free, dark-soil vineyard floor is the best condition in which to capture the sun's daytime warmth.  In my opinion, a cover crop is essential to soil health, but for frost protection the timing of mowing down a vineyard's cover crop is crucial to saving the grape crop.  And, that's the conundrum of cover cropping.
By the way, Happy California Poppy Day!

Winter rain.

It started to rain this afternoon, sigh...

I shouldn't complain, it has been a spectacular winter so far.  We haven't had any heavy rain since Thanksgiving.  There were two minor rain events in December, each no more than mere tenths of an inch, but that was it.  Napa has been basking in glorious sunshine, under heavenly blue skies and springlike temperatures, for weeks now.  It's been great.

Unfortunately, there are consequences to such fantastic, yet uncharacteristic, winter weather.  There has been no snow up in Lake Tahoe (and I do feel for the ski resort operators) and, from a viticultural perspective, the pathetic, non-existent growth of vineyard cover crops.  

Normally this time of the year one would expect vineyard cover crops to be perhaps knee high, but the poor cover crop in the above photograph looks like it's been napalmed.  Cover-cropping is not an exact science and the successful germination of a cover crop is entirely dependent on the timing of the first autumn rains. Napa had early rains last year, but we haven't had any rain since to sustain vigorous growth.  

I'm glad I didn't plant a cover crop this winter.

Don't let the grass grow under your feet.

I didn't: I let the grass grow on top of my boots.

After a whole summer of seeds apparently collecting in amongst the laces of my trusty Timberlands, it only took one rain event, followed by sunshine, to bring forth a small crop of miscellaneous vegetation. These old vineyard boots were destined to be retired anyway (I don't normally leave my boots outside), so there is no pressing need for me to mow my impromptu, mobile cover crop.

The same opportunistic weeds take advantage of the first available moisture every year. It's just that this is the first time I have seen it happen on an article of footwear.

To mow, or not to mow.

In some parts of the vineyard, that have not yet faced the wrath of Vinomaker on his tractor, the cover crop persists. The crimson clover (Trifolium incarnatum) looks particularly cheery and spring-like caught lolling about in the glow of the late afternoon sun. It may seem a bit early, but I have already been giving some thought as to the cover crop I would like to sow this autumn.

As much as I like crimson clover it has a major drawback: it's flowers rise above the foliage and therefore it has to be left uncut, until relatively late in the spring, to facilitate reseeding. Delaying the first mowing in Vinoland for that long is not really feasible (think frost protection) and would have been nigh on impossible this year. The early winter rains, and plentiful sunshine in January, meant that it was necessary that the vineyard be mowed slightly earlier this year than is the norm. Whilst a cover crop of subterranean clover would be ideal as it tolerates close spring mowing, I'm leaning towards white clover (larger biomass than crimson), or soft chess (cv 'Blando' brome) depending on the availability (and price per lb) of these particular seeds.

As with most decisions in life, more research needs to be done - suggestions welcome.

Common as muck.

My favourite colour of flowers is blue; forget-me-nots, delphiniums, lobelia, bluebells...you pick any blue flower, I'll love it! Agapanthus and cornflowers are prodigiously blooming around Vinoland right now and they look so pretty. So, it goes without saying that one of my favourite weeds is common chicory (Cichorium intybus) because it too has a blue bloom.
Chicory has a deep taproot which can penetrate the hardest of soil types and can be useful as a vineyard cover crop. This beneficial weed can be planted to aid in the management of deficit vineyard irrigation programmes because it can apparently improve wine quality in overly vigorous vineyards (think reduced malic acid and methoxypyrazine levels in Cabernet sauvignon.) It is also very drought resistant, which is probably the reason it grows so successfully, and abundantly, along roadsides this time of year. However, it is a tall weed so don't expect to easily navigate any vineyard that is planted to chicory.
The taproot of chicory is also cultivated as a coffee substitute. Does anyone remember Camp Coffee? Growing up, there was always a bottle that lurked in the back of a cabinet in my mother's kitchen. It may still be there!

Crimson and clover.

Vinoland's cover crop is looking quite fetching right now, or at least the bit that Vinomaker hasn't already mowed yet is. Alongside the common vetch and the field peas, the crimson clover (Trifolium incarnatum) is blooming like crazy. Vinodog 2 had trotted over and joined me in the clover as I took some photographs, so we both lay back in the warm Napa sun, contemplated life and...well it didn't stay like that for long as V2 ran up the hill after a squirrel ending our pensive, albeit short, respite.
This particular legume makes for a lovely cover crop; it doesn't have a particularly high biomass (compared to some of the cereal grasses often used for cover crop), but it does fix atmospheric nitrogen...and it just looks so pretty.

The state flower.

Happy California Poppy Day. Yes, would you believe the official flower of California (Eschscholzia californica) has it's own special day.
These poppies have been blooming all over the Napa Valley since February (the first ones I noticed where alongside the driveway into Napa Valley College), and will continue to grace roadsides, vineyards and fields with their presence until late summer. Extremely drought tolerant, they easily self-seed and consequently pop up in an new part of Vinoland every year. This particular poppy is blooming right alongside a Pinot grigio vine.
I was once shown a photograph of a vineyard that had been sown with California poppies as a cover crop, it looked beautiful. Poppies do have rather large tap roots that can penetrate hard soils and clay and aid in aeration, but they would not add much in the way of nitrogen or biomass to the soil. Besides, who would have the heart to want to mow them down? Not me.

Bean dip.

This past week, in his spare time, Vinomaker has been busy mowing and weed-whacking/strimming the tall, lush vegetation that has sprung up all over the vineyard. Alternate periods of rain and sunshine have resulted in a verdant extravaganza of weeds this spring. Besides looking rather unkempt, high vegetation in the vine rows can contribute to frost damage of the developing vintage. By effectively raising the floor of the vineyard, tall plants positively invite frost to settle right at the level of the succulent, new shoots on the grapevines. The uninterrupted flow of dense, cold air past the vines is extremely important.
In the long grass at the edge of the creek, I found a couple of runaway bell beans (Vicia faba) enjoying their reprieve, after a quick swim, from certain disking death over in the Far Niente vineyard a mere 100 yards away: a fate their siblings succumbed to just a few days ago. They will be safe here in the sanctuary I call Vinoland.

Paddy's Day in the vineyard.

It's not exactly shamrock, but the Buttercup oxalis (Oxalis pes-caprae) that is blooming in the vineyard right now is about the closest I am going to get to the real thing, (it's actually described as having "shamrock like leaves" so it will have to suffice). I like most weeds that voluntarily decide to populate the vineyard: they do after all eventually become organic matter that benefits soil health. In summer nothing grows here, everything is parched and dry, so I enjoy the pretty flowers and foliage of certain weeds in the spring whilst I can. There are only a few truly noxious weeds that need to be removed before they get established in great numbers.
Being from Liverpool, and not entirely understanding why Americans are so obsessed with St. Patrick's Day, I thought I'd do my little bit to honour a few great-grandparents who are indeed, if only inadvertently, responsible for a great-granddaughter who gets to enjoy an agreeable yellow-flowered weed growing wild in a Californian vineyard on a bright, sunny day in March.
Personally, the 23rd of April is the day for me, so stay tuned.

Escape from Far Niente.

It has been well over a month since I last posted anything about Far Niente and I don't want the folks over there to think that I have given up stalking their vineyard.
The cover crop in the FN vineyard is looking fabulous right now and it's growing like, well, weeds. The vineyard crew seem to choose the same mix of plants each autumn; bell beans, field peas, vetch, and some weird wheat/barley hybrid like Juan Triticale, all high in nitrogen content. In the spring the cover crop will be disked into the soil. A green manure cover crop, such as this, can add 150 lbs or more of nitrogen per acre, which could possibly cause excessive vigor in the vines, particularly on highly fertile soils. The Chardonnay vines that are grown here don't seem to be overly vigorous, so I can only assume the vineyard manager knows what he is doing.
What's different about this picture though, is the fact that a heavy rainfall last November 20th resulted in some of the cover crop seed being washed out into a low corner of the vineyard. Deposited against the roadside fence, and the culvert that runs alongside it, some escapees are opportunistically flourishing in the nooks and crannies where they came to rest.
Can you blame these poor little fava beans and field peas for wanting to abscond? I'd do a runner too if I knew I was going to be disked into oblivion.

Field Marigold.

I love this little weed. The Calendula arvensis is blooming all around the Napa Valley right now, looking for all the world like a blanket of sunshine on the unmowed vineyard floors. It is such a pretty and cheery looking little plant, much more pleasing to look at than the straggly mustard growing, in many instances, right alongside it.
The field marigold primarily inhabits disturbed coastal and urban sites, but it is expected to greatly expand it's range in California. I hope so: I'd be quite happy to have it inhabit every square inch of Vinoland.

Prune early for Christmas.

Almost one year ago to the day, this vineyard was undergoing the exact same farming operation, pre-pruning. The people at Far Niente have to be the most consistent and dedicated winegrowers I have seen in these parts. Either that or they have nothing better to do. Having polished off a bottle of their delicious 2006 Cabernet sauvignon, with Vinomaker and Thud last week, I know that is not the case.
I hope I don't come across as some Far Niente groupie or stalker, it's just that their vineyard is the closest commercial vineyard to where I live, just some 200 yards from my gate, and it is hard not to notice when stuff is going on over there, seeing as I walk it's entire length daily with the Vinodogs.
So a very Merry Christmas, and a very nice looking cover crop, to all the Far Niente vineyard crew.

Roll me over in the clover.

If you had visited the Napa Valley as recently as 5 or 6 years ago, you would have noticed the absence of any vegetation in the vineyards except for the foliage of the vines themselves. Thankfully that's changed. The majority of farmers have now adopted a 'no-till' policy, choosing to plant cover crops or allow native vegetation to proliferate. Even a vineyard floor covered in dandelions would be preferable to a 'scorched earth' approach to farming.
This year I chose to plant a clover mix in our vineyard. Clovers are legumes, belonging to the Fabaceae family, and so are capable of fixing nitrogen from the air. Through a symbiotic association with bacteria from the genus Rhizobium, they convert nitrogen gas (N2) in the atmosphere to ammonium (NH3) that can be readily used by crops. Because rhizobia occur naturally at low levels in most soils, the bacteria must be present on the legume seed at planting, hence the uniform look of the seed in my photograph. They are coated with everything they need to perform this amazing feat of alchemy.
There are arguments for and against the planting of cover crops. On the pro side; they are very beneficial to overall soil health, add organic matter to soil, retard soil erosion and provide shelter for beneficial predatory insects, amongst other things. Naysayers fear; competiton for available groundwater, too much nitrogen fixation (that could result in too much vigour), and the over-wintering of problematic insects...but seeing as I am a proponent of cover cropping, and it's my blog, I'm not going to dwell on the negatives. There is a lot more to this subject than just tossing out a few seeds and calling it good. Cover crop management is quite complex and is a science in itself, but the positive aspects of this practice are to me incontestable. Besides, it was a great day to be outdoors. The weather was fantastic (84F) and V2 accompanied me as I worked...or at least I think she did, if the huge shadow of her large ears just to my side was anything to go by.