Last days of 2013 in the Matakohe vineyard

How is it?

Have done a bit of work lately on the vineyard.
Bought some wire and finished off the last three rows.
All good now.

Top wire is 10G low tensile wire. Soft as.
Rounded the top or each post, ready for the bird netting
Have sprayed on three lots of Boron during flowering and fruit
setting.

Seems to have worked, as the bunch sets in the past have been more like
hen and chicken (only one or two large and  few small). In some
cases no set per bunch, with all fruit drying up and falling off. Known as colocure.

So am really pleased. You can see the difference!

Now all I need to do is keep the birds off the grapes as they ripen.
Need to invest in white knitted bird netting.
Cost of which will be $1300. Still after all the hard work watching
the birds get a belly full is a little disheartening.
Started to leaf thin around the fruit.

This can be back breaking work.
Have decided to remove all of the plucked leafs and wheelbarrow them
off site. As I have have some blackspot on many of the lower leafs this year.
So bought some EcoCarb and after spraying this on it seems to have stopped
the spread of the blackspot in it's tracks.

Looking good I think. Grapes in lag phase so about 60 - 65 days to picking. Brix 4.2 degrees. 25th December 2013.
Cheers