Postponed Due to Rain

If this was a baseball game, it would be canceled. Don’t get me wrong. Here in California we are all loving the rain. We wanted the drought to end. We just didn’t want it to end in one month.

Let me recap. Just after harvest it started to rain. It was so wet that if you had any wet spots in your vineyard you couldn’t get all your cover crop planted. Here at the ranch we got 9.6” in October.

Pruning usually starts in November and December, but you don’t prune in the rain. We got 5.3” in November and 7.1” in December.

Strip spraying, where you kill the weeds under the vines by spraying with a 4-wheeler. Not at Simoneau Vineyards. We got 23.6” in January  and 18.8” in February.

So all those postponed projects from the previous five months need to be done before bud break in mid-March. Every grower is in the same position. Still, I wouldn’t trade all the delays for one less day of rain.

And guess what, projects are completed. Bring on bud break.