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Our vines are blooming, how about yours?

I noticed that some of Chardonnay and Merlot started blooming on Friday.  I ended up spraying on Saturday for pre-bloom treatment.  Once again, from bloom to 4-5 weeks after bloom is critical periods for black rot, downy mildew and powdery mildew cluster infection.  Please stay on top of your program during this period.  Once you successfully protect your vines through this period, you can relax a bit.

I saw a little bit of downy mildew development in our vineyards, but nothing major.  I am wondering how recent hot and dry weather conditions affect their population.   We will see...

Speaking of hot weather, I've noticed that there is air quality alert issued to Fredrick county.  I don't know what would be the effect to grape diseases, but it does affect us.  Make sure to hydrate yourself and keep eye on your body conditions.

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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!

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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 – ...