I have been on sort of a blog hiatus this winter. Not for any reason other than it has been a busy winter analyzing data. We have some information from our first season with this project. Go to our webpage at  http://ccesuffolk.org/grape-research/ and click on the report titled "Innovative Under Vine Management Strategies" to see the full report. I will post a somewhat abbreviated version on this blog.

We spent some time looking at pruning weights this winter to gauge impact of covers on vine growth. Here is a before and after shot of one of the Merlot vines pruned in the research vineyard.

We will have a little more help this summer with the addition of two full time Cornell students as well as a part time person. We also have four additional vineyards that have joined our original five to try out groundcovers in their vineyards. More to come on the new blocks as well as a few interviews with some of the growers who participated last year and their thoughts on the first year of this work.