4.21.2010

Problem Children

I've noted several health issues here and there in the vineyard so far that I wanted to post.

Probably the biggest issue is what looks like Eutypa in a lot of the Merlot.  Budbreak saw a sizable number of these vines only pushing shoots at the very ends, with all the intervening buds staying closed.  Not much I can do about it this season, but I have a feeling I'll have to cut these back severely next pruning season.  Here's a good example of one of the affected vines (which Darlene calls the "special ed" vines, lol).

Eutypa?

Next up we have an issue which seems to only affect 2 of my vines at this point, but unfortunately, one of those was one of the most robust I had up to this year.  All of the foliage is stunted on these in a way that looks almost like herbicide damage.  However, I had not sprayed any herbicide when symptoms showed, and these two vines are far apart in the vineyard, surrounded by other healthy vines.  Scratching my head here:

This sad guy was one of my best vines last year :(

For comparison, the vines directly next to the one above (panning the camera right) look like this:

Sad Guy's neighbors seem just fine. Hmmm.

Last, we have a couple of vines that seem to have some kind of deficiency with yellowing away from the leaf vasculature.  This is something I saw in a few vines last year, too, and in the same area.  Not water stress, so maybe nutritional?

Some sort of nutritional deficiency?

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