From the end of harvest (around early May) until the start of budburst (early April) the major job required in the vineyard is pruning. It is one of the most time consuming and therefore most expensive tasks in the vineyard calender. And theres no getting away from it - its just hard physical labour.
Most of our vineyards are pruned to 2 canes, each cane having 8-10 buds. The first task is to use the loppers to make the heavy cuts which eliminates most of the previous years wood. In the photo above Daryl Ashby, the vineyard manager for our Crossroads vineyard, is pulling out the cut wood.
From here the next pass through the vineyard will be to select the 2 spurs and the 2 canes which will tied down for the new season. Pruners will trim up each cane, tie it down to the wire and cut off any excess canes not required. Its time consuming and if the vineyard rows are longer than about 200 metres then it can be quite soul destroying for the pruners if they cant finish too many rows in a day.
And into the mix it is winter so it can be cold and miserable. No wonder the industry has labour shortage problems.
No comments:
Post a Comment