Vern sent this to me so I thought I would post it on here.  My ornamental Cleveland Pears are blooming after our lack of rain for several weeks.

It looks like water, or lack of it, plays an important part in getting a double crop.  We received a lot of water all summer long until just recently.

Use of Water Stress in Forcing Kyoho Grapevines to Produce Two Crops per Year
C. Kamande Ndung'u ¹, Goro Okamoto ², and Ken Hirano ^2
1 Graduate School of Natural Science and Technology, Okayama University, 1-1-1 Tsushima-naka, Okayama 700, Japan
² Faculty of Agriculture, Okayama University, 1-1-1 Tsushima-naka, Okayama 700, Japan.

The use of post-harvest water stress as a management practice in producing two crops of grapes annually was investigated using three-year-old own-rooted Kyoho grapevines. The vines were established under a restricted rooting-zone culture (ca. 30 L/vine). Five weeks after harvesting the first crop, vines were subjected to water stress treatments by completely cutting off irrigation. Control vines received normal watering throughout the year. Though vines in all the treatments produced a second crop, the severe water stress lasting for 16 days was effective in inducing early budbreak, enhancing blooming, and increasing fruitfulness, cluster size, berry set, and berry growth, compared to continuously well-watered vines. The mild water stress of 10 days was less effective. There was an apical dominance tendency in budbreak and a growth potential gradient favoring the upper shoots during the second cycle. Fruits from the two cycles did not differ significantly in their quality. The study shows the potential of water stress as a management practice, especially in increasing the productivity of warm-regions grapevines.

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August 13, 2008 – The Napa Valley Grapegrowers held a press conference at Larkmead Vineyards in Calistoga, California to forecast what is unanimously being heralded as an exceptional vintage of pristine grapes with lower than average yields in a year marked by extreme growing conditions...

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The July 2008 Newsletter is posted. Once you log in, you can view it by clicking on the "Downloads" link on the left side of this page. Click on Monthly Newsletters then click MVWS 2008 Newsletters.

Reminder: Bring your wine glass to the next meeting.  The presentation will be "Wine Bottle Storage and Temperature". 

We will also conduct our wine scoring again so if you want a bottle of your wine scored, bring it to the meeting.  No label on the bottle please.

Thanks!

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