Week of July 18, 2021

The TAProots vineyard continues to grow, with now four types of grapevines to look after. MIDSUMMER GRAPES require a variety of tasks, depending on the variety and their maturity. Our 7.5 acres of Concord grapes are well established and, with much rain and warm weather, have many heavy clusters after a strong bloom. They need to be watched for insects (especially Japanese beetles) and fungal diseases. Our 675 Riesling vines are now three years old and were pruned and trellised to their vertical shoot position wires. They have tremendous growth of vertical shoots and large number and size of grape clusters. After much deliberation, we stayed with our plan to prune off these clusters to save the plant energy for the vines and next year’s harvest! The table (seedless) grapes have 6-7 varieties which include white, red, purple, and black grapes. Their need is for netting, to prevent the deer, raccoons, and birds from eating them even when green. Finally, we now have 500 Cabernet franc vines, planted a month ago, with almost 100% success of rooting and lots of rain, rapid growth out of their blue tubes. This may necessitate putting up the trellis poles and wire earlier than planned. Obviously, TAProots grapes are having a great year, demanding us to keep up with their different needs.