Salisbury Vineyards

AVILA VALLEY GRAPEVINE 2-08

It is that time of year again – pruning. With the early cold spells this year, the grapes are undergoing great dormancy giving us a jump on our pruning. Usually we wait until after the holidays to start the season but this year we did a little pruning before Christmas. Because we have added another 18 acres of organic grapes (3,000 cases) to our program up in Paso Robles, we can use the extra time, especially after losing hours because of rain-days, to get it all done before St. Patrick’s Day when we start looking for bud break.

We are pruning back to one bud plus the little “insurance” bud tucked in at the bottom of the shoot next to the spur. This bud is semi-protected from frost, hail, and rain so it is a backup to the main bud we are pruning back to. This usually gives us two shoots that will provide 1 to 2 grape cluster each, times the 16 spurs/vine gives us around 25-30 bunches per vine. If we get our usual 3 ton/acre crop, that is about 5.5 pounds of grapes and about 2 bottles per vine. If you would like to try your hand at pruning, check in at the Schoolhouse tasting room and sign up even if for just a few hours

Things are looking up in the rain department also. We are holding close to average after the deluges we have had so far this season. The ground was sure thirsty and soaked up all that was thrown at it. Now we are getting great cleansing of the salts in the soil that come mainly in the irrigation water. The flushing of the root zone makes it easier for nutrient uptake. Speaking of that, we are doing something that most growers do not by adding soil amendments in 4 inch wide holes, 12 inches deep, that we bore under drip emitters. We figure there is no sense in scattering the amendments all over the vineyard block when we really need them underneath the vine near the roots. Otherwise, most of it is not available to the vine and is lost through runoff. With steelhead endangered creeks at the bottom of the vineyard, we can’t take the chance of any chemical, organic or not, ending up in the streams. Especially with a $13,200 fine per dead fingerling!

The block with the biggest problem is on the east end of the vineyard, fronting the freeway, which is heavily made up of sandstone. In fact, the quarry used for the road-base for US 101 was part of this field. Having been in the farming business for over a century and a half, my family has always looked for fertile Class One soils to grow our fruit, grain, and vegetable crops. Good wine, on the other hand, comes from basically lousy soil unfit for most crops. The old saying goes that winegrapes need to “suffer” in order to produce great wines, and man, do we have some crummy dirt and a whole lot of suffering going on. In our case if it is good enough to build a freeway, then it is good enough for wine - go figure!

We have built up and are farming only about 6 inches of soil above the solid sandstone and it is in pretty good chemical balance because of our sustainable and near fully organic farming methods. We do have a shortage of soluble calcium which needs gypsum to bring back up. We are also a little behind on Potassium and Nitrogen so we are putting an organic cocktail mix of all three in the holes for the roots to find. By topping off the hole with soil, we eliminate any chance of runoff plus the added benefit of it all being made available directly to the vines. The 1 foot deep hole is also a great sump for extra water holding capacity near the vine. I drew up plans for the front mounted hydraulic auger for our tractor in the mid-90’s and we welded it up in the shop because of a similar problem we had in a vineyard in Paso. It works great and was one of those “necessity is the mother of invention” farmer things.

If you want great email weather information, get PG&E’s John Lindsey’s daily report by signing up at This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it For the best local rain Doppler, Google - National Weather Service Radar Image Vandenberg, and click on NWS Radar Image Loop Base Reflectivity from Vandenberg (third down, give it a minute to load). We use it to decide if the vineyard crew should come in or not because you can see exactly where the rain cells are and which direction they are moving. Also, http://www.sloweather.com and http://www.ksby.com are good sites. - ’“May those who love us, love us; and those that don’t love us, may God turn their hearts; and if He doesn’t turn their hearts, may He turn their ankles so we’ll know them by their limping.” (Anonymous)