The forecast turned out to be right and we got nearly 8 inches of rain over three days. It was a slow, soaking rain that started on Saturday and didn't tail off until late Monday. It produced little runoff, which is good for the subsoil.
I suspended my regular irrigation for this week (Monday-Wednesday) where I run one station each day for three hours. The ground is very wet, and I don't want to drown the vines. I will evaluate the situation to determine if I need to suspend the schedule again next week.
Before the rains came, however, I managed to spread one bag of Lesco 18-24-12 fertilizer, but got only two rows covered before I ran out. The spreader settings were a little too aggressive at "5", even though I set it according to directions on the spreader. I will pick up two more bags and dial back the setting to a "3". This fertilizer is formulated to encourage root development, which is just what my young vines need. With a good crimson clover cover crop and the addition of the starter fertilizer, I should have the vines covered for development this year.I'm picking the flower clusters off the vines I planted last year to encourage vine development—something I should have done last year on the vines planted in 2015—to put the focus on growth rather than fruit.
I am also stripping shoots from the trunks of vines that have two healthy cordons to encourage growth in the fruiting zone above the cordon. I am not altering any vines with a single cordon or other development problems, letting the vines go wild until I can find dominant shoots that are candidates for new cordons.
Most of the two-year-old vines have shoots up past the first catch wire, 12 inches above the cordon. Thinking about where I was this time in 2015 when I first planted, the vines were sending their first shoots up from the graft union, down in the grow tubes, and they didn't emerge until sometime in late May. I was still planting bare-root vines at this time two years ago; the Merlot were the last vines planted on May 5.
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