Wine Diary
Sun Salutation – Between Sprouting and Flowering
In spring, during an energetic time of growth, the appearance of our wine lands is changing almost daily. Friends of nature enjoy this performance while walking through the vineyards, and they might actually feel the plants thriving towards the sun, if not actually being able to watch them grow. Maybe we all might somehow entertain this feeling in ourselves, just by opening our arms and stretching our body towards the sun. One does not have to be a Yogi to find pleasure in this exercise!
Well, our busy hands in the vineyards have other priorities, as the vigor of the vine’s growth must be supported, managed and then again reduced and tamed. Naturally, need of green-work is augmented with the development of vegetation. For now, we keep removing excessive shoots from the vines, many of them also carrying fruit sets. Thus, we are not only ensuring better aeration of the future canopy, but also a second quantity reduction after pruning.
Soon the remaining shoots will have grown long enough to be “threaded” in the trellis. The aim is to achieve a healthy and well deployed canopy (see: young shoots). For the aesthetically impressive and also complex “Lyra-training method” it is a bifurcating, V-shape kind of canopy, each of the two leaf walls getting more distance from each other while stretching towards the sunlight!
However, at present, rain would be more welcome than the sun. We did get only a bit of it last week. It would be fine, if the forecast cold spell brings along some precipitation instead of late frosts!