Thunderstorms forecasted for this Saturday...

Mmmm... This will be a tough call. Northern VA and also Southeastern VA will expect thunderstorms during Saturday morning. The reasons to justify your protective spray could be: 1) vines has been grown quite a bit over this week due to warm weather; and 2) you might have sprayed more than week or 10 days ago and it is due anyway. One the other hand, there are reasons to hold off the spray: 1) the expected thunderstorm is in the morning hour and the forecast of Saturday is sunny with high wind, i.e., leaves may not stay wet for a long time; 2) the chance of rain is 30-40% as of this morning; and 3) there are rain forecasted early next week (20-40% during Tuesday and Wednesday for many parts of VA) and you may want to aim for that rain.

Please check your local weather, fungicide record, and disease history of your vineyard to make a decision the best for you.

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Downy mildew gallery

At Winchester, we had light rain events during the night of 6/12/09, but it was short events and the relative humidity was low (80% or so), thus it probably did not promote any infections. However, we are experiencing continuing favorable nights for downy mildew sporulation (average T>55F, high RH (80-100%)) for 10 days now. Yesterday, we conducted a formal disease assessment, and observed first incidence of powdery mildew for this season. We had plenty of infection events in last two months, so it was not surprising. At this point, it is a trace level of infection on untreated vines. Downy mildew was the major disease so far. We had up to 40% incidence on untreated vines. Next runner-up was black rot. It varies vine to vine, but some of vine had 10-15% incidence. Phomopsis was omnipresent as I expected from early May rain falls, but severity was low overall. We will examine diseases again in the near future, and I will update as the season goes. Here is downy mildew ga...

Season's Greetings!

I hope you and your family have a good holiday season and a Happy (and safe) New Year! Thanks again for your support of our programs. Here are some recent media highlights. 😉 The link will open a new window. AHS AREC promotional video that highlights some of our activities. The link did not work... It asks you to log in to VT. I will request the IT people to change the setting, but in a meantime, here's the same video. We also appeared in the Library of Congress project “Winery Workers of Virginia”. One more announcement: I will be moving this blog to a new location ( ext.grapepathology.org ) early next year. I had to make a change due to the email subscription service, which has been terminated. You do not need to change your bookmark or your email subscription. The URL will be forwarded to a new site and your email subscription has been moved to a new site already.

Up-coming meetings and Sentinel Vineyard Report #2

I think many readers of this blog subscribe to Tony’s viticulture note, but just in case, here is some information that you may be interested in. The second Sentinel Vineyards Report is out now. The report is attached at the end of this post. Make sure to subscribe to Dr. Beth Chang’s Blog here: https://sites.google.com/vt.edu/vtenology/home Two upcoming meetings: New Grower Workshop 4 November 2021 at Winchester VA Team taught sessions for new grape growers and those considering developing a wine grape vineyard in the Mid-Atlantic. Registration is required ( and the deadline is this Friday! ). Please click the link below. https://register.ext.vt.edu/search/publicCourseSearchDetails.do?method=load&courseId=1600122 Virginia Wineries Association Annual Meeting November 15 & 16, 2021 Hybrid event: in-person (Richmond, VA) and remote virtual options The technical session theme on Day 2 is “Wine Stabilization – ...

Virginia Grape Disease Updates

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