3550 new baby vines in our family

A sample of these lucky bugs that have settled down in our new baby vines. Don't miss the video of them at the end of this edition

Dear Friends,

I know that I have not writen for a long time and that it is late to announce but, as we say, better late than never... We finally planted our very first vines at Mas des Brun and while I am doing this edition, 99% have bloomed and are quite healthy. 

Before planting, it was necessary to decompact put back into the soil all the just germinated cereals which seeded from last year farming. Then, we needed to make the earth solf enough as to dig the wholes in the ground. Here are some videos that will explain this

On March 15th, some farmers friends from Languedoc came to help me get started and plant half of the vines. Most important is to be straight and to do so, we used Pithagore lessons to make sure our angle was straight.

After planting, the most important for those weak plants to give give them a lot of water in inder to evacuate all the air around the roots and give them the message that it is now time to work and root down.

Then, I decided to seed some mustard flowers in between rows as to compete a bit with the baby vines. Our winter has been very wet and I knew this would not endender the rooting of the vines. Most important, I want to give a lmessage to the vines to develop as straight down as possible their roots and this competition would help. Another interesting point of the mustard is that it re-seeds naturally twice a year and will bring green nutriments to our vines. When they got yellow, I decided to cut them, especially since we are now facing a major drought (it has not rained for 3 months)

For the moment, a lot a work is done manually but I can also count on my remodeled 1954 tractor. This is so precious as it turn on really small spaces but, most of all, it is very narrow. Thanks to it, I have been able to plant 40% more vines in the same block. This means that I will lower down my yield per vine per 40% and then produce better grapes.

 

The very last of our baby vines endevor has been to plant...poles. I decided shaping those vines around poles because it is the traditional way and because my plantation density is high (40% than average). I will then trim them verticaly so that they don't interact each other and benefit from all the sun and sea breeze from the Mediteranean

See, I have not posted much but we indeed worked hard. This morning, as I was manually plowing around the baby vines, my back told me to stop... I guess it was time to take a break and write this note.

I will leave you with this worderful video of many pictures 

 Wishing you a wonderful summer.

Cheers,
Jean-Marc

 

Comments

[Rédigé par : Bill Facker]

Jean-Marc, this is fantastic! Congratulations! Aloha, Bill Facker