I visited another vineyard today that is participating in our undertrellis management project, One Woman Wines and Vineyard. Claudia Purita (the one woman) has been mowing her vineyard in its entirety for some time but last year decided to seed new zealand white clover under her vines so she wouldn't need to mow. She planted a half acre of her gruner veltliner and was happy with the outcome so planted the rest (3 acres in total) this spring. I was able to catch up with her today and take a few photos of the freshly seeded rows as well as the clover that was seeded last year.

This photo is of the New Zealand white clover that was seeded in 2011.

This photo is from today and was just seeded this week.

Claudia spent a lot of time preparing the soil prior to planting. The area was hand hoed and rototilled then smoothed out to seed and finally the seed was scratched in. Since Claudia hasn't used herbicide the hoeing was the most time consuming. If a grower is using herbicide hitting the weeds with that first then scratching the seed in will cut the time for bed prep down by a lot. Alternatively if you have a grape hoe (such as a clemens), that might cut down on the time as well. As part of this project we will be evaluating strategies that growers used to plant their cover crops. We will include as many of the costs associated with planting that we can and compare the different methods (including germination success).

Today Alice and I went out to take a look at a few vineyard blocks that are involved in this project. The first stop was at Martha Clara Vineyards where we had set up a trial last spring. The under trellis cover crops look great, the "no mow" (mixed fescues) and clover have filled in and look to be thriving.

We also went over to another site, Mattebella Vineyards, they have been seeding different types of under the vine cover crops for a few years now. Here is a picture of their "no mow" that is now going into it's third season.