Inaugural UK Organic Vineyards Meeting



The first meeting of UK organic and biodynamic vineyards was held at Laverstoke Park Farm, near Basingstoke today.

Speakers included Ben Raskin from the Soil Association, Will Davenport from Davenport Vineyards, Vinodh Krishnamurthy from Laverstoke Park and Jane Awty from the UKVA sustainability group. Representatives from nine vineyards, as well as the Soil Association and WineSkills attended the meeting.

The main topic of the day was spray programmes for organic vineyards and much debate took place about the use of sulphur, copper, seranade, compost teas and other treatments used for disease control.

It was agreed that a second meeting should take place next year towards the end of June with a focus on Biodynamics and the practical issues associated with using compost teas.

Mycorrhizal Fungi still appear to be working well

Mycorrhizal Fungi

When we planted the vines we dipped the roots in a product called Rootgrow, which is a mycorrhizal fungi from a company called PlantWorks. Mycorrhizal fungi normally occurs naturally in soil. It breaks down organic matter releasing nutrients particularly phosphates and can significantly increase root capacity. Unfortunately herbicides and modern farming techniques have significantly reduced the naturally occurring fungi. The idea with Rootgrow is to give new plant roots a kick start.

Last year we measured weight of the prunings from 100 vines that had been treated compared to 100 untreated vines for each variety which indicated that the product had resulted in nearly 10% additional growth. This year the results were similar overall but showed a significant variation between varieties:

Pinot Meunier  33% increase

Pinot Noir        11% decrease

Chardonnay     16% increase

The results for the Pinot Noir are probably misleading as most of the untreated block were very weak and therefore had to be pruned quite hard which artificially increased the weight of the prunings from the untreated vines.

Next years results should be more definitive. We will also try and measure the comparative quantity of fruit from the vines.

 

Never Mind the Weather

Nick Seymour and Alex with the Weather Station

We are now proud owners of a weather station which was delivered and installed at the vineyard yesterday by Nick Seymour.

The weather is of course a major factor in our ability to produce quality fruit. By building up weather patterns over a period of time it will help us to predict, and therefore manage, the risks of pests and disease. It will also allow us to understand how the timing of flowering, berry setting and ripening effects the quality of the grapes.

The data that is collected includes temperature (ground and air), relative humidity, wind speed and solar radiation. It is updated on the web every 30 minutes so we can see from the comfort of our homes exactly what the weather is doing at any given time. The station can also send text messages to warn us of falling temperatures and the risk of frost. When this happens we'll have to get up in the middle of the night and put in place frost protection measures, which will probably include lighting bougies (oil lamps) and driving the tractor up and down the rows with a frostbuster which is like a giant warm air convection heater!

Albury Vineyard features on BBC Radio Surrey

Much to my suprise I was contacted by BBC Radio Surrey last week who were keen to interview me about the vineyard. Having overcome my nerves, my vanity got the better of me and I agreed to be interviewed on a programme called "Dig It", BBC Surrey's anwer to Gardeners' Question Time.

For those of you who are desperate to hear the interview you can get to it by clicking on the following link. It's about 35 mins from the start and only lasts for about 5 minutes.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p00cf415/Gardening_05_12_2010/

No major cock-ups but I think that I was right not to pursue a career as a radio presenter!

Preparing the Vineyard for Winter

Autumn Frost in the Vineyard

The first frosts have already arrived and we are now preparing the vineyard for winter.

November is normally a quiet time on the vineyard as the main job in the winter is pruning, which doesn't start until December or January when the leaves have all fallen and the wood has ripened.

Having said that, Alex has been busy sowing grass seed between the rows of the newly planted vines and she is now tackling the weeds that have beaten the mulch. Chickory is a real problem some of which has survived from a ground cover the year before the vines were planted (please note JB!!). Unfortunately the woodchip we used this year was too fine and is not as good as the batch we used on the first block which is still working well.  On top of that the pheasant seem to enjoy spreading the woodchip about the place which has left the mulch very sparse on some rows. We will probably have to spread another 800 cubic metres of woodchip next Spring to win the battle of the weeds next year.

David Seyall with the grass seeder

In the next few weeks we are expecting delivery of a weather station which will monitor temperature, relative humidity, radiation and rainfall all of which will be viewable on an internet site. One of it's primary purposes will be to give us early warning of a frost in April/May after bud burst. Threshold values for temperature can be set which when triggered send a text message to a mobile phone - probably in the middle of the night!

Other tasks this winter will be to replace broken bamboo canes, complete the trellising and assess how many vines we will need to order to replace any that have died. Most importantly we also need to complete our strategy for minimising the risk of frost damage next Spring.

Pheasant in the Vineyard

In spite of there being nearly 2000 pheasant living at the top of our vineyard they haven't caused too much trouble this year.

The deer fencing keeps most of them out of the vineyard as they don't fly unless they are frightened. However those that do get in are too stupid to fly out and tend to walk up and down the fence boundary trying to find an exit. Steve, the local gamekeeper chases them out now and again with his dog, and when its dry we round them up using the Landrover. The shooting season is now well underway so we won't see much more of them soon!

The only damage this year has been to some of the newly planted vines at the top of the vineyard where they have eaten most of the green foliage. They also seem to enjoy scrabbling around in the woodchip mulch which has caused quite a mess in places.

Next year we will hopefully get our first harvest and I have heard stories of pheasant eating the grapes. We will probably have to net some of the rows next summer to protect the grapes from the pheasant and other birds.

The Vineyard in Autumn

The growing season is pretty well at an end and we are now busy getting the vineyard in good shape for the winter. At this time next year we will hopefully be preparing for our first harvest (volunteers welcome!) but there is no fruit this year as vines don't produce any real fruit until their 3rd year. What fruit there was has either been eaten by the birds or cut off so that the available carbohydrates have been used for growth of the canes and the root system. Next year we hope to get around 40% of the total possible yield from the first 5 acres of vines which could be as much as 6 tonnes.

The vines we planted last year have recovered well from the severe frost in May. The woodchip has worked well as a mulch and there are very few weeds. The grass between the rows will need cutting before the winter. The newly planted vineyard is being cleared of weeds and will be seeded with grass between the rows next week. The whole vineyard has been given a final spray of compost tea and various nutrients will be added in November to try to address Boron, Magnesium and Iron deficiencies.

Over the winter the main job will be to prune the vines. This will probably start in January and be completed during February and March. The new vines planted this May are doing quite well but because of the dry summer haven't grown as much as we would have liked. This will mean that they will pruned to just two buds to encourage root growth and a strong new cane next year.