Recovery Underway

Just in time for us to leave town again for another week, the grapes are recovering.

I lost about half of the Foch clusters and more of the Traminette, but the Chardonel and Frontenac still look pretty good. In fact, starting to see some early color on the Frontenac.

Irrigation is required as we have no more than a 20% chance of rain any day for the next 2 weeks.

Some trouble with shingles this week. Not the shingles I usually encounter - I'm talking about shingles that belong on the roof.

There was also one pesky shingle that has been out of place for several years. The need to repair this section prompted me to go ahead and fix everything. Adam says OSHA would not approve.

We are on garcinia watch. The G. uniflora set some fruit last year but dropped them early. This year, I got flowers from G. intermedia as well, and I went to work with my paintbrush. Still holding so far. The G. intermedia did not set any fruit.

Finally, just had to post a pic of the best ribs I think I've every made. Fourth of July ribs on the BGE. Recipe here, but we used Mango Coconut and Blackberry instead of the salted caramel preserves.

If you do one thing late...

It is thus with farming: if you do one thing late, you will be late in all your work.

-Cato the Elder

We went to Florida for a medical conference. I'd seen a couple of Japanese beetles before I left so the last spray included a small dose of Sevin. We returned to devastation.

About 25% of vines were completely defoliated, including several vines loaded with grapes. All of the vines had some damage. I resprayed immediately and they are now under control but I had to drop the clusters on half a dozen vines, a mix of Foch and Traminette. We'll see whether there are enough grapes for even a one-gallon batch now. It depends what other calamities befall us.

On the plus side, those clusters that remain look decent. The Frontenac and Chardonel are in the best shape. Vidal recovery continues, we'll have about 13-14 vines this year and the plan right now is to replant.

The serviceberry and haskap harvests continue to grow. The haskaps are getting an occasional dose of antifungal after spraying the grapes. I don't know yet whether they will need to be sprayed with the same regularity as the grapes but we will know by August.

High temperature of 99F today, so we'll have an early start to pool time.