Getting Ready For Grapes

Getting Ready For Grapes. I’m Greg Martin with today’s Fruit Grower Report.

That long cool spring 2 years in a row has really been causing problems with growers all across the northwest. From cherries, apples and pears to wine and table grapes the season has been pushed and that can cause it’s own problems depending on what Mother Nature may have in mind this fall. Bill Powers, owner of Powers Winery talks about this years crop of wine grapes.

POWERS: Well it’s a decent crop. Probably going to be down 20 or 25%. But the worst part, we’re 2 weeks late so we’re at the mercy of a late fall again and that’s what got us into trouble last year was a real late fall and then come a real quick freeze after that and the vines hadn’t any chance to recover and particularly in our lower areas we lost the plants to the ground.

One question that will remain though is what the quality of this years crop will be and Powers is optimistic.

POWERS: I don’t see any reason we won’t have our standard quality it’s just a matter of waiting it out and then hopefully we’ll have a long, long fall. It’d be a disaster if we’d have an early frost. I’ve seen frost here on the 25th of September, a killing frost and that’d be a disaster for the grape industry.

Powers recently has installed the largest solar array of any winery in the state and hopes that more wineries will follow his lead. Powers Winery and Badger Mountain Winery have been producers of organic wines for the last 20 years.

That’s today’s Fruit Grower Report. I’m Greg Martin on the Ag Information Network.