Another piece of the seasonal jigsaw...

A few posts earlier there was a photo of Daryl Ashby, the Crossroads vineyard manager, pulling out the cut wood from the vine. Well heres the result - he dumps it in the middle of the row. At this point we have two choices in how we deal with it. Clearly it cant stay where it is, the row middles will need to be mowed during the season and the vine cuttings may carry the spores of disease such as Powdery Mildew or Botrytis which could then infect next years fruit.

If we have time, and often we dont, we would like to remove all these cuttings from the vineyard and then burn them. But more often than not we will use our Mulcher (attached to the tractor) and drive down each rows and turn these sticks into a thousand pieces of mulch which then acts as a kind of nutritional compost for the vine.

Just another piece of the seasonal jigsaw to complete. Every task takes time, its usually done manually and theres a particular order to adhere to. Its all working towards the wonderful conclusion next harvest.