Mother Nature has waived the checkered flag and the vines have put the pedal to the metal. We have rapid shoot growth and in spite of the February Freeze we are seeing abundant flower clusters in all varieties -yahoo! After the clusters bloom and we can evaluate fruit set we’ll have a better idea of the season’s projected crop load, but so far it’s looking good.
Once the shoots are up and growing we have our hands full keeping them in shape. The first big task is shoot thinning: removing extra shoots, unfruitful shoots, or shoots in the wrong places. Since we have very enthusiastic vines here on our site this can be a time consuming task but we enjoy the hours spent in the sunshine and cool breezes amidst the many-varied greens of the spring foliage.
