Posts are in, irrigation is in . . . Where are the vines?
After one cool and wet start to June, the month turned around and finished strong with temperatures over 30 and some days close to 40 for the past ten days or so. There seems to be a slight cooling trend at the end of the week but still plenty of sunshine.
The cooling trend will be welcomed by the crew at Township 7. Due to a few unavoidable delays, there are 1300 Merlot plants that are still waiting to get in the ground. The heat of the past couple weeks pretty well put the stop to that activity so the hope is that Thursday and Friday will present the right conditions.
Is it too late to plant? Probably. We're certainly going to get a higher mortality rate over the winter as the new vines won't have the opportynity to prepare themselves as they would have had they'd been planted in mid-May.
Elsewhere around Township 7 Okanagan we're catching up with the tucking and raising the training wires on the trellis system. The fruit set looks encouraging.
Pinot Gris sets up for 2006.
