When the Barbera vines at Sorella Ridge emerged from their winter slumber several days ago, they took off with abandon. Every day when I get home from work and walk the rows many of the shoots have literally grown a few inches in just one day. The first thought that comes to mind when I look out and see all of my vines growing right in front of my eyes is the firefighting phrase “fully involved”[1]. Like an aggressive fire that is moving in all directions, the vines too are teeming with growth. Life indeed is good in my little vineyard!
The downside of all this activity is that I’ve had to catch up on some of my vineyard duties. The most important task at hand was to install the upper wires on my trellising system. With the new shoots reaching towards the sun, I needed something for them to grab onto. Originally I had planned on just a single wire for both the upper and lower supports. Recently, however, I’ve been rethinking the upper wire and thought that 2 wires would result in a fuller canopy. The idea for the upper support is that the shoots grow vertically inside the top wires, over the wires to either side, and back down towards the ground. Since the fruit zone for the vines is just above the lower wire, the growth from the shoots coming back down from the top wires provides a shade canopy for the clusters.
