Time to NET!!!

Our Malbec grapes have changed color now and the birds are circling around looking hungry!!! Thus we went through and did one more bit of bunch thinning this week to drop off any bad bunches or clumped together bunches as a last "trim" before covering the ripening grapes with netting. (once they are netted you really can't directly leaf pluck or actually easily mess with the grapes of course) In the photo you can see some grapes on the ground and the remaing bunches on the wines. Note there are no leaves around the bunches--just higher up on the vine. Thus the sun can shine directly on the grapes.

In the next photo you can see my wife, Sandra, clipping on the tops of the netting. Tied on her waist you see a plastic container which is avery specialized and high tech device holding a bunch of lime green grocery bag plastic clips-these are the same ones you get on a package of bread. (the high tech holder is the bottom half of a plastic gallon milk jug!!!) We walk along and clip the tops and bottoms of the netting around the grapes to leave no gaps for birds to enter. This is pretty tedious and requires a lot of pale green plastic clips. It took a team of 8 of us three days to lay out and tie down the netting this year. We have 10,000 meters of netting for all our rows. That is 6.2 miles of netting- which was a nice slow walk to place using the tractor going in reverse holding bags of the netting on a wood pallet on the front loader of the tractor. In the third photo you can see the tractor going backward toward the road with the bag holding the netting. The person walking is pulling out and placing the netting along the grapes. The netting is first attached to the clips on each pole and then we walk along with the grocery clips to fix the nets at the top and bottoms to hold it in place and keep the birds out. (I better stop this explaination as my wife says this is way more than any person needs to know about netting!!!!)

Anyway, we now have our grapes protected from the birds--baring a heavy wind storm.
More next time.

Summer is still glorious here in NZ.

Dr Jim Downunder