Vineyard Agronomy

Chardonnay with Iron deficiency

Pinot Noir with Magnesium deficiency

It is essential to analyse the soil and vine tissue to understand the availability of nutrients in the soil. Even though we are organic, and never use herbicides or pesticides, it is sometimes necessary to apply nutrients to the soil and the vines to address any significant deficiencies.

Agronomy is the application of various soil and plant sciences to soil management and crop production. To advise us on such matters we employ the services of John Buchan, an excellent agronomist who specialises in organic viticulture.

John has just analysed the results of some recent soil and tissue samples and it seems that generally the overall results are encouraging. Whilst pH levels, at around 7.8, are still high, they are slightly lower than when we first analysed the soil. pH is a measure of the acidity of the soil and is important as a high pH can "lock up" nutrients restricting their availability to the vines. 

It's important to recognise that plant nutrition is a balancing act, as over application of any single nutrient can cause antagonism with other nutrients. Our priorities for this autumn and next spring will be improve the levels of Magnesium, Manganese and Iron, which are still very low.

As can be seen on the examples above, the leaves on some of the vines are already showing signs of these deficiencies.

ITV arrive at the Vineyard

ITV filming at the Silent Pool

Earlier this week an ITV film crew arrived at the vineyard but sadly only to use it as a car park! They were there to film a new drama series called The Oakes which will appear on our screens early next year. The plot involves a girl who drowns in a lake. The Silent Pool is a local beauty spot adjacent to the vineyard where they filmed the drowning.

Filming started at 8.00am and didn't finish until late into the evening, which I'm told will result in only 10 minutes screen time. It's apparently a low budget film but there were at least 25 cars parked in the vineyard, a huge amount of technical equipment and excellent catering to keep everyone well fed!

Powdery Mildew Flag Shoots

A flag shoot infected with Powdery Mildew

Powdery Mildew is one of the most widespread fungal diseases of grapevines in the world. It is characterised by ash-grey to white powdery growth on green tissue of the vine. If uncontrolled it can cause serious crop losses and impair wine quality. One spore of Powdery Mildew can multiply to 50 million spores in just 3 weeks!

Dormant buds can be infected and survive over winter. When these buds shoot they are deformed and covered with the powdery mildew spores. These shoots need to be removed and destroyed. We have come across several shoots this year but hopefully it isn't widespread.

Sulphur and Copper are traditionally used to control mildews on the vineyard. We are trying to avoid these treatments by using compost teas which populate the vines with friendly bacteria and fungi.

English bubbly beats Champagne in IWC trophy

Camel Valley in Cornwall have won a prestigious IWC trophy for best in class in the Sparkling Rose category, beating off 450 other entries including many champagne houses.

This is great news for English bubbly. Hopefully Albury Organic Vineyard will win an award soon after our first vintage becomes available in 2014!

For the full article in the Daily Telegraph follow the following link:

Daily Telegraph Camel Valley Article

The Vineyard in Summer

Now that summer has arrived the vineyard is looking a real picture. The vines are recovering from the severe frost in May and the whole area is covered with poppies. Whilst pretty, the poppies will have to be cut soon before they seed and invade the woodchip mulch.

It looks like the cold winter and May frost will have killed around 150 vines. Nearly 100 are Pinot Meunier which have already been replaced. During the last couple of weeks we have been taking off the lower shoots that are not needed and bud rubbing to stop unwanted shoots from forming. We have also been tying up the shoots we want to keep so that they aren't mutilated by the tractor!

More spraying of compost teas this week in the hope that they will suppress mildew which we have already detected under the microscope.

Battling Weeds with Fungi and Woodchip

Weeds are one of the biggest challenges for an organic vineyard. Without the use of herbicides weeds can quickly take over and compete with the vines, which is especially bad news for new vines trying to get established.

Agricultural soils which have been ploughed for many years often end up being dominated by bacteria rather than fungi. There is a correlation between plants and their preference for soils that are dominated by bacteria versus those that are fungal dominated or neutral. Since the path from bacterial to fungal domination in soils follows the general course of plant succession (see earlier blog on the Soil Food Web), it is possible to predict what type of soil particular plants prefer. In general, perennials, trees, and shrubs prefer fungal dominated soils, while grasses and weeds prefer soils dominated by bacteria. Vines generally do best in soils that have an F:B (fungal/bacteria) ratio of between 2:1 and 5:1.

At the moment the vineyard is heavily dominated by bacteria which means that weeds will quickly dominate if nothing is done to control them. Longer term the fungal content of the land will naturally increase and we will try and help this process by using compost teas with a high fungal content. In the short term however we are just about winning the battle by using huge amounts of woodchip as a mulch and have just finished spreading over 1000 m3 of the stuff on the 12,600 newly planted vines.

Couch Grass - an Organic Nightmare

The dreaded couch grass has appeared on the perimeter of the vineyard. Couch grass is a noxious weed whose spiked flowers somewhat resemble an ear of wheat in structure. It is a perennial grass and the rhizome spreads rapidly in all directions in light soil, sending up leafy stems from the nodes.

Couch can be a nightmare for organic growers as we can't use herbicides and the only real way of removing it is a lot of hard work on your hands and knees pulling out the roots.

Fortunately it's not too bad at the moment and Alex has been able to pull out most of it. Fingers crossed it won't spread into the vineyard.