ever wonder what kind of people take viticulture classes? these kind. the one on the left is my teacher. our class had 9 people: 6 guys, 3 girls. you only see guys here b/c we're checking indicator paper to see how well the sprayer covered the leaves of the grapes. guys do more spraying than girls. like in our vineyard, i decided not to do the spraying b/c i'm way to short to adjust the booms on our sprayer (so i'd have to attach a ladder to the tractor somewhere) and i'm just barely strong enough, and my arm is just barely long enough to turn the pto on and off (the switch that turns the sprayer on/off). it's not very female friendly/small person friendly.
indicator paper. fascinating. you staple it to the leaves. i'm going to get some to try it out in our vineyard. (now you are wondering why you ever suggested i do a blog...) ;)
i liked this sprayer b/c it was my size. :)
a vine with "perfect" canopy management at the Iowa State University Reasearch Farm. ours do not look anything like this - they look more like jungley messy bushes. you want all the shoots to arc downward, not climb all over each other so the fruit is exposed to the sun and you don't want it too thick.
skeletonized leaves by japanese beetles. we don't have them in our county yet. bad bad news. :(
