Spring cold injury and insect damages...
As with many other places in the VA, we were suffering from frost damages. We experienced several near freezing events this year, and most notably, a few hours of 25F on Thursday morning. Our younger Chardonnay planting (4th leaf) had a bud break around 4/1, and being suffered more from it. I estimated about 80-90% of emerged shoots are now gone. Our older Chardonnay (8th leaf) is about a week behind, and my visual estimate as of yesterday was about 25% loss. Some buds/shoots look like they are surviving, but I am not sure how it will go after tomorrow morning... There is a very nice blog post about spring frost from Dr. Michela Centinari at PSU. If you are interested in, please follow this link. The other items I noticed in our vineyards is damage from climbing cut worm. For us, it always starts from the Eastern side of our vineyard which is facing a small patch of wood. If it is a warm weather, I would spray for it, but I think I will wait until the tempe...
