Each week I learn more and more about how important it is to manage pest issues both in the hopyard and vineyard.  Last week I was able to spend the day with Luke, the Viticulture Extension Specialist here at CLEREL, in Niagra County.  We visited four different vineyards and did a follow-up winter damage assessment.  We ranked the vines by the number of clusters they had and by their growth.  We also noted any disease we saw in the vines; we saw quite a bit of crown gall, downy mildew, and powdery mildew (photo to the right).  I really enjoyed meeting all of the vineyard owners and listening to them talk about their management practices and the work they put into their vineyards.  Hopefully I will have more photos of the diseases to post later.

The rest of last week and the beginning of this week were spent working on my project in the hops.  I collected both my low and high leaf samples and counted the predatory mites and the TSSM on the leaves.  I still haven’t seen very many of the predatory mites I released with Kim in June, but I am starting to see increasing numbers of TSSM and I have a feeling these numbers will only keep rising.

Now for some exciting news!  I landed safely in Sacremento, California yesterday where I will be until next Tuesday. I was able to join Terry Bates, the Cornell Lake Erie Research and Extension Director, scan vineyards from Delano to Napa Valley.  This is my first trip to California, and I couldn’t be more excited!  Today we scanned two table grape vineyards in Delano and tomorrow we will be in Paso Robles. It is amazing to see how much farther along the table grapes were than the grapes at home (photo to the left); a lot of the table grape vineyards are already being harvested. I will have lots of news and photos from my trip to share with you when I get back next week!