Rain, rain go away!!
I never thought I would say that! After the last 3 years of drought conditions, when we begged for rain, this spring has been a complete turn-around. We've had rain virtually the whole month of May! This week it rained almost every day with a couple of really good heavy rains and thunder storms. Luckily there wasn't any hail here along with those storms. Over in Madiran they had lots of hail, some producers losing 100% of their potential harvest this year. I can't imagine what that would be like.
Back here in the southern Rhône, we are scrambling to fight mildew and oidium. Conventional farmers just go out and spray a systemic fungicide and are "tranquille" as they say here, but we who are organic and can only rely on copper and sulfur have to be super vigilant. Matt has been trying to reduce our copper use in the vineyards, keeping our levels as low as possible, but in a year like this we don't really have a choice. Matt was out spraying about 10 days ago and yesterday we were out there again. Normally we treat every two weeks, but with all of the rain we have been getting it just gets washed off. I'm headed back out there this morning to finish what we didn't last night, we're only supposed to have scattered showers today. I've seen some spots on the leaves in various places in the vineyards indicating that the mildew is out there, I just hope that we're spraying at the right times in order to control it. Our first three years were relatively mildew and oidium free, and organic agriculture seemed to be a piece of cake, hopefully we can pull this one off!
My computer is having lots of issues these days, I've got a bug that freezes everything up, so I'm having to run Windows in Safe Mode, which is a pain, thus every time I think about posting, I am put off by the idea of having to deal with it! I think I'm going to have to finally switch computers, but I hesitate because I like my computer!! It's been with me since 2000, shocking, but true!
Back here in the southern Rhône, we are scrambling to fight mildew and oidium. Conventional farmers just go out and spray a systemic fungicide and are "tranquille" as they say here, but we who are organic and can only rely on copper and sulfur have to be super vigilant. Matt has been trying to reduce our copper use in the vineyards, keeping our levels as low as possible, but in a year like this we don't really have a choice. Matt was out spraying about 10 days ago and yesterday we were out there again. Normally we treat every two weeks, but with all of the rain we have been getting it just gets washed off. I'm headed back out there this morning to finish what we didn't last night, we're only supposed to have scattered showers today. I've seen some spots on the leaves in various places in the vineyards indicating that the mildew is out there, I just hope that we're spraying at the right times in order to control it. Our first three years were relatively mildew and oidium free, and organic agriculture seemed to be a piece of cake, hopefully we can pull this one off!
My computer is having lots of issues these days, I've got a bug that freezes everything up, so I'm having to run Windows in Safe Mode, which is a pain, thus every time I think about posting, I am put off by the idea of having to deal with it! I think I'm going to have to finally switch computers, but I hesitate because I like my computer!! It's been with me since 2000, shocking, but true!
Hi: Not sure if any of these materials are registered for downy mildew, but they are all effective for powdery mildew (oidium en français)
Kaligreen (Potassium bicorbonate.... sort of like baking soda)
Serenade ( a really good biofungicide... OMRI certified organic made by a company called AgraQuest) works on botrytis.
Sonata ( another really good biofungicide... OMRI certified organic made by AgraQuest)
Sonata and Serenade are both bacterial fermentation products... all three of these are organic. turns out Sonata is registered for downy
mildew on hops and cucumbers...might work on grapes.
Good luck. No rain here in Sonoma county, but the north wind won't stop blowing... really drying things up.
Good luck, Robert Hopkins
Posted by: Robert Hopkins | June 05, 2008 at 07:27 AM