They're in!

Our new baby morvèdre plants are now safely in the ground.  On Friday we went over to the pepinieriste, Lilian Bérillon, to pick up the little guys.  They sure don't look like much when you get them just a little stick really with some roots on it.  There is red parafin on the top to protect the spot where they grafted the French Mourvèdre plant to the American rootstock.  I've explained this before, but for those who missed it, here goes again (copied from my previous post in November:

In the late 1800s French plant enthusiasts started importing vines that were native to America and planting them in French gardens and vineyards.  Little did they know that the American vines carried a louse called Phylloxera that fed on the root-system of the European vines and killed them.  The bug spread quickly throughout Europe and devasted the winegrowing industry in France, Spain and Italy. Other countries were certainly affected, but I'm not sure to what extent. France was the hardest hit, to the best of my knowledge. (If you're interested in reading more, there's a good book on the subject called Phylloxera by Christy Campbell- certainly available from you local bookstore.) They tried just about everything to save the vines until they figured out that the American vines were immune to the Phylloxera bug.  So, the solution was to graft French vines onto American root-stock, and thus the European wine industry was saved. Today most European vines are still grafted, though vine-growers are toying with some French-root vineyards, but only in small quantities.

Now on to the actual planting of them! 270 was the number of the day, we had no idea how long it would take us, but we hoped that we could do it in one day. This series of pictures will basically explain how it worked... First Mr Paume (the man who sold us the vineyards) came to show us how it is done:

He also loaned us his hole-making tools:

It's a good thing he came to check up on us, because he had some very valuable tips, like always turning the plant so that the graft is facing north, into the wind.  Once we got going, it wasn't too bad, two people planted, two watered the plants and two followed behind mounding up the dirt to make sure it was planted deep enough, and to also make a little trough so that when we water them this summer all the water won't go flowing into the rows... Ah, we are a hi-tec operation!