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Well, it looks like we will see more rains coming in next week or so. Sounds like a typical start of the season for VA vineyards, doesn't it? Since most of vines have 2-10 inches of shoots, our main focus will still be Phomopsis , especially if your vineyard(s) experienced Phomopsis in the past.  At Winchester, we are experiencing 27+ hours of wetness with the average temperature of 48F or so. This will be a low Phomopsis risk event, and counting. Plus, especially if you had a serious downy mildew issue in the past season, it may not be a bad idea to think about downy mildew because the next series of rains for this weekend and early next week may happen when air temperatures will be in 60's and 70's.  As for Phomopsis, a protective spray of mancozeb, captan, etc. is pretty much the only mean of management, but we do have some options for downy after the rain event. So, if you did not spray before this series of rains, but you are lucky enough to have a window for a spray b...

Several growers contacted me recently to discuss about disease management after recent frost events. Here are my take on it. 1) If you have some damages on your shoots/buds. As usual, you work with the growth of the vine, but not with the calendar dates. If you have lost a lots of growth from the primary buds, you may have to start over your spray program.  If you have mixed growth from the primary and secondary buds, you may need to adjust your spray program based on what may come from the secondary buds, especially around bloom. Flowers from the secondary buds may lag behind, thus, you may need protect flowers for a longer period of time. 2) If you have extensive damages on your shoots/buds to the point that you may not able to expect crops. Based on what I heard, we are not seen this scenario this year. However, if you happened to have the major issue from the frost events, well, first of all, I am sorry.  Second, you still need to have some level of disease management in o...

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...

Our 7-yr old Chardonnay vines are in bud swell stage, and others are tagging along.  It looks like we will see bud break in a week or two. One of diseases you need to consider this time of the year is Phomopsis cane and leaf spot .  It causes minor leaf spots, but more importantly, it can cause necrotic lesion on shoots and rachis.  It also causes berry infection; however, it is not common with wine grapes because of our spray programs.  Materials for black rot and downy mildew are often effective against Phomopsis, thus, the coverage for these diseases are also working as management of Phomopsis, especially later in the spring/summer. Phomopsis takes a while to establish in the vineyard; however, once it is established, it is difficult to get rid of this disease.  Some varieties, such as Viognier and Seyval blanc, are more susceptible to Phomopsis than others.  Phomopsis tends to become noticeable as a vineyard gets older because of it l...

Thanks again for those of you who were able to attend IPM workshops.  I hope you enjoyed the meetings, and if you have any suggestions or comments, please do not hesitate to contact me. Here are copy of fungicide updates and interactive fungicide planning presentations. 2016 Fungicide updates ( Please note: I just learned that Luna Tranquility won't be available for grape...  Too bad since it would be a good material for Botrytis management.  We still have Luna Experience, but there will be a label language change for grape.  I will post it once I learn more about it.) Interactive fungicide planning. Also, I think many of you have already participated, but there is a survey for evaluation of my Extension activities.  If you could spend 3-4 min of your time to answer it, I would greatly appreciate. (This is the same as the one Tremain sent out and I distributed at the VVA and other meetings.) https://virginiatech.qualtrics.com/SE/?SID=SV_eQGl7C8eYx23blX This is ...

There are several extension activities in the next few weeks that you maybe interested in. 1) IPM workshop at Early Mountain Vineyards This will be a full day IPM workshop to cover viticulture, entomology, weed science, plant pathology, and legal and safety updates. This will count towards VA private pesticide applicator license hours (full credit for category 90). Date: Feb. 16th 2016.   Agenda 9:30 Introduction and overview of workshop 9:45 Viticulture updates – Tony Wolf 10:15 Worker Protection Standards- Roberto Quintero 11:00 Entomology updates - Doug Pfeiffer 11:45 Weed science updates - Jeff Derr 12:30 Lunch ( please bring a lunch ) 13:15 Laws and regulations - Roberto Quintero 14:15 Pathology Updates- Mizuho Nita 15:00 Interactive Scheduling – in teams 16:00 Meeting Adjourns   2) Interactive Integrated Grape Disease Management workshop at Dobson, NC This will be a half-day IPM workshop that focus on grape disease management and legal and safety updates. This will also ...

Here are handouts from my presentations from the VVA meeting. 1) Slides from "Interactive Grape Disease Management Workshop" 2) Results from the "planning session". Please note that this is the results of answers from randomly selected people, and I am providing this as a note from the workshop.  Although it looks "OK", this is not what we recommend. 3) Slides from "Biology and Management of Grapevine Crown Gall" It was very nice to see you all at the meeting.  As usual, I really enjoy talking to all of you! If you have missed the VVA, there will be two meetings that we will host: 1) IPM workshop at Early Mountain Vineyards on 16 Feb from 9:30 AM 2) Interactive grape disease management workshop at Surry county Extension Center (210 North Main St., Dobson, NC 27017) on 18 Feb from 1:00 PM. I will post details of these meeting in a few days.