It's a bird, it's a plane, it's a ....

Weed Badger!!!  Yup, Matt's new toy is called a Weed Badger.  One of our biggest issues over the past few years has been lack of rain.  When it does rain, the weeds that grow in our vineyards tend to benefit more from the rain than the vines do.  Since we are organic and don't use any chemical week killers, the weeds have progressively gotten to be more of a problem.  There were some this year that were taller than I am!  So we really wanted to get on top of it this year.

First of all we have been doing a fair amount of plowing to uproot the weeds in the rows.  In our biggest vineyard the previous owner had planted grass every other row to prevent erosion and to provide a bit of competition for the vines, in essence to make them less vigorous.  Well, vigor hasn't really been our problem, and erosion isn't that big of an issue either, so we decided to plow up the grass too.  The grass also tended to drink up any rain water that we got.  Matt has been spending a lot of time going over the grassy rows trying to break up the well-established grass.  This will have two effects, one will be as I said to keep the rainwater for the vines, the second will be a nice boost to the soil with the decomposing grass, it will be good organic matter for the soil.  That along with the compost we spread, will hopefully give our vineyards the oomph they need for the coming year.

Back to the Weed Badger though!  There are many incarnations of this sort of machinery on the market.  It's basically an in-row tiller, it tills the soil between the vines, eliminating the weeds at the base of the vines that are impossible to get with a regular plow.  Of course we could do this by hand, but some of the weeds have very tough roots and are next to impossible to pull out, and secondly, it's about the last thing on Earth I want to spend my time doing!!  The great thing about the Weed Badger is that it tiller is situated on the side of the tractor and not behind it, so you only have to look down to monitor the progress and not behind you, which is very tiring for your back and neck.   Additionally, the tiller is round with lots of metal tines.  It turns in  circle and rips the weeds out, contrary to what other in-row machines do which is to plow then up, which often displaces the dirt away from the base of the vines.

Matt thought that this machine would be best suited for our purposes.   The biggest hitch though was that instead of coming from France, Italy, Spain or Germany, where other machines of this type are made, it comes from the US!  Leave it to us to have heavy farm equipment shipped over here.  Of course we couldn't find what we needed here.  Matt has a certain knack for finding the most obscure and hard to get equipment and then deciding that it's the one and only thing that will work for us!  So after 4 months, we finally have received the Weed Badger.  We have very high hopes for it.  Now we just have to figure out how to put the thing together since they couldn't ship it assembled!!  Stay tuned for more news on that!

Note: The two middle photos are from the Weed Badger website.  www.weedbadger.com

Comments

[Matthew Kling]

OK, I think I will throw in my 2 cents ;-)

Amy and I differ slightly when it comes to the weed issue. In fact, I am not that concerned about the amount of water that the weeds consume, since most of them go dormant when it gets hot and dry. In addition, when it does rain, the rain goes deeper into the soil when there are plant roots to act as "channels."

However, some of the nastier weeds have deeper roots, and these are the ones that do not go dormant, grow very tall and are just plain annoying and unsightly. They can also be hard to remove with some of the in-row ploughing equipment, so that is why I thought the Weedbadger would be a good solution.

Long term, I would like to actually leave whatever indigneous weeds that happen to grow in the middle of the rows, occasionally mowing them when they get too high, and then do a pass in the Fall with the plough with only 4 teeth, to aerate and decompact the soil, and without removing all of the native plants. I don't think you can have healthy soil without plants growing in it, so my idea is to simply manage the weeds rather than totally eliminating them .

The Weedbadger will be one more tool in our shed to help us come up with the right balance in the vineyards. BTW, I decided to have it shipped unassembled, because I figured that if I assembled it myself, I could also fix it myself if something went wrong ...

As for my knack for finding the obscure, let's just say that I am rarely content to just follow the choices of others - I like to have equipment that is effective and that supports the way I like to work in the vineyards. In the case of our somewhat obscure (but obtainable in France) CIMA sprayer, it allows us to use much smaller doses of copper and sulfur because of its excellent atomization and the position of the spray nozzles.

Let's see what else I can find that's interesting ... wait until I get a chance to put my new idea for dynamizing biodynamic preparations into practice!

Matt

[Prof Bill O'Riordan]

What an interesting site!

I now know why the La Gramiere 2006 is of such excellent quality.

So much care and affection lavished on its its creation and journey to
the very surprised and appreciative end consumer!!

Everybody should drink at least a couple of bottles a day before it is all gone!

Bill.