Bud Break is Here!

Spring is definitely here, and we're starting to see bud break to prove it. Two days ago, on Sunday afternoon, I was able bush hog between the rows in the Naked Creek Vineyard. This served two purposes. The first and obvious intention is to mow down the grass cover crop between the rows. The second benefit is to chop up all the wood taken off the vines during pruning. Some people advocate removing all of the pruning waste from the vineyard and burning them in order to reduce the disease pressure particularly from fungal diseases. At this point I just don't have the time or labor help to get that done, so we just chop the debris with the bush hog which speeds up decomposition and adds organic matter back to the soil.


Yesterday as I was walking through the vineyard at home I noticed that we are definitely beginning to see bud break at the Spring Mill Farm Vineyard. We have a pretty diverse smattering of grape varieties growing in the SMF Vineyard, which reminds us that different grape varieties break bud at different times in the spring. This year our first variety to break bud was Himrod, which is a seedless table grape developed at Cornell University's Geneva Experiment Station. The NY 76.0844.24 Hybrid (I wish Cornell would come up with a name for this one) is also starting to break as well.

Himrod was the first to break bud at the SMF Vineyard

NY 76.0844.24 Hybrid just beginning to break bud

I hopped into the truck to run up the road to the Naked Creek Vineyard to check the Chambourcin vines for bud break. For the most part we've not quite had any bud break there. There may be one or two vines just barely breaking open but not enough to say that bud break has occurred. It will be anytime now.

Chambourcin buds ready to break at the Naked Creek Vineyard