The state of the union?

The state of this Cabernet sauvignon graft union is rather good: the cambium of the stock and that of the scion appear to be calloused perfectly.
I have been busy performing some odds and ends of vineyard operations the past couple of days, which has included the training up of a few Cabernet and Syrah vines that I field-budded last September.  Meanwhile, Vinomaker has been entertaining himself by replacing broken valves, and failed drip irrigation hose and emitters, to ensure that the vines will have an adequate water supply during the coming summer months.  Although, Vinomaker didn't seem that entertained.  I think I got the better of the vineyard chores.  Sorry Vinomaker!

Off with their heads.

I can't spend all my time obsessing over the non-existent spring-like weather, or looking for the almost non-existent bloom...well, I could, but I shouldn't. There are other things to be done in the vineyard. So, this weekend I redirected my energy towards unearthing the rootstocks that I field-budded late last summer.

There are several simple steps to follow in performing this particular vineyard operation; carefully push away the dirt pile, unwind the grafting tape, check the bud has a good callous, whip off the rootstock's new growth, place a milk carton over the new shoot (in this case Syrah) for protection, all the time avoiding stealth-puppy-kisses from a particular, small black and white dog. Oh, and get up, brush off your knees and move on to the next vine. Easy-peasy!

Stink, stank, stunk.

I spent my afternoon field-budding in the vineyard with no company other than that of the highly malodourous Stinking Goosefoot (Chenopodium vulvaria) - my goodness that weed really does pong! Every single time I passed it by the not unattractive, silvery-green leafed plant reminded of it's location in the vineyard with a ghastly, lingering whiff of rotting fish. Charming! No wonder the Vinodogs stayed out of the way, passing the afternoon by snoozing on the deck.
It was a productive day, and only once did I come close to cutting one of my fingers off.

A day in the vineyard.

I have been drinking too much wine of late and have not been paying enough attention to the work of growing the grapes that become the wine. I remedied that a little today by doing some small jobs in the vineyard that could be put off no longer.
One small but necessary task was the removal of milk cartons that I had placed over vines this spring, vines that were field-budded last September, after determining if the grafted bud was viable. I then trained and tied each liberated young vine up a stake.
It looks like I will have about a dozen vines to field-bud this year. The demise of several of the vines seems to be gopher related. The other vines seem to have simply expired.

My buddy.

I am so excited, I'm expecting...more grapes that is.
The past two days, I have been tending to the Pinot grigio bench grafts that were planted late in the spring of 2009. All the buds had pushed on last years spindly growth and it was time to cut them back to two buds and place milk cartons around them. Just as I was finishing I noticed that the one rootstock that I had field-budded over to Pinot grigio last September had lost it's protective mound of earth and my handiwork was exposed.
Just take a gander at that bud-swell. This was perhaps my third attempt to marry scion and rootstock in this particular spot in the vineyard. Unlike Syrah, which takes to grafting like a duck to water, Pinot grigio is just so stubborn. Of course, I still have to unwrap the grafting tape and check that the bud is sound, in all its time under wraps it may not have formed a sufficient callous. But from my, all be it limited, field-budding experience I must say that all the signs look encouraging. It is very gratifying to have learned a specific skill and to actually be able to use it and not have to rely on somebody else to perform this service for me.
So fingers crossed and here's hoping that my buddy's non-specific cells have decided to grow up to be mature and functioning xylem and phloem.

Biological tinkering.

How did you spend your Sunday? Mine was spent field-budding root stocks over to Cabernet sauvignon, Pinot gris and Syrah.
Unfortunately, there are unexpected casualties each year in a vineyard. Last year it was seemingly the mission of Vinodog 2 to prematurely dispatch a few plants to vine-heaven and it was primarily these that I was grafting today. However, there were also some gopher casualties and a couple of deaths from unknown causes.
The photograph on my post about field-budding last year (Sept. 20th), showed the taped up graft. This year I decided to show the graft, sans grafting tape. You can see that the bud is a pretty close fit on the trunk of the rootstock. This is very important as the cambiums of the donor and host should match perfectly to ensure that the non-specific cells in the vines will ultimately become cambium cells, and that the trunk will accept the chip bud. I won't know if the grafts were successful until next April or so.
My knees ached a little bit from all the getting up and down, but all the aches were forgotten after a cold Sierra Nevada Torpedo Extra IPA. I fared better than poor Ron Combo, who from now on will be buying wine it seems, rather than helping with its production.

My babies.

I spent most of the day in the vineyard performing, what my professor at the college would call, spring viticultural operations. I call it back breaking work: suckering extraneous shoots from the trunks of the vines and stuffing wayward shoots into the trellis wires. The rows really look pretty when you are finished, but that's really not the point...unless you are a girl. I also trained up some baby vines. Can we all say, ahhh.
I had field budded some vines last September and now it is time to train them up a stake and watch them mature into wine grape bearing adults. Sniff. Brings tears to my eyes, or is that my back aching?

Ouch, that hurts!

This looks worse than it actually is, or at least I hope so.  The vine has not had a serious accident, although it looks like it's sporting a giant bandage. This rootstock has just been grafted to Syrah.  I tend to be a bit anthropomorphic so if I thought in the least that my poor vines felt anything during field budding I would be devastated.  The process involves using an extremely sharp knife to cut a bud from a lignified shoot of a chosen cultivar, making a corresponding cut on the rootstock, taping with a special tape, whacking off most of the rootstocks summer growth and covering the whole thing up under a mound of dirt...until April.  Yes, you have to wait a long time to see if your work was fruitful. It's a great way to spend a Saturday afternoon and at least this year I didn't almost cut my pinkie off!!!