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AWARD WINNING ORGANICALLY PRODUCED WINES |
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There is a perception
out there that any sort of organic agriculture
is an extravagantly expensive endeavour
that leads to politically correct, but
inferior product; this conclusion may
seem logical given the prices asked for
bruised and mushy organic produce in many
stores. However, in the case of grapes,
organic growers can expect to incur the
same costs per acre (and slightly higher
per ton costs) as with conventional grape
growing, with the added benefits of higher
quality yields (bringing more dollars
per ton), healthier plants which are less
susceptible to disease and winter damage,
and the peace of mind afforded by the
removal of toxic chemicals from one's
working and living environment.
A walk through our Vine Yard might provide
a snapshot of how some of these natural
systems work. The first thing you will
notice are what we call, "volunteer"
plants in the Vine Yard. Some grape growers
call these weeds, and they will spray
herbicides like Roundup or Gramoxone or
2,4-D to eradicate them, and they will
create, in the process, a picture-perfect
tourism brochure Vine Yard with bare soil
containing nothing but vines. Neat, tidy
and probably toxic; we'll admit that the
volunteers occasionally compete with vines,
particularly young ones, for space and
nutrients, and we'll also acknowledge
that Roundup, in particular, breaks down
very quickly, but in their defence, those
persistent, energetic volunteers provide
cover which prevents moisture loss, host
space for beneficial insects and, when
cultivated, organic material to condition
our very poor soil. The volunteer growth
is controlled by a combination of mowing
and cultivation about 3 or 4 times during
the growing season.
We have to point out too that most of
the volunteers were here first, and they
constitute the natural flora of the Okanagan
(knapweed, an introduced plant, is a noxious
exception). We highly value the fact that
only 18 acres of our 30-acre parcel is
cultivated; the rest is left in its natural
Interior Dryland state, full of wildflowers,
Ponderosa Pine and native shrubs and grasses.
You can take a walk through the Vine Yard
and find a rich compendium of native plants,
all possessing their own special beauty.
It is sad to see the encroachment of abnormally
green subdivision lawns, black asphalt
and deep brown, wet cedar bark mulch into
this fragile and disappearing ecosystem,
full of unique, subtle dusty grays, greens
and browns. We see ourselves as stewards
of this natural heritage, and have tried
to step lightly upon it. The landscape
includes the Vine Yard; the Vine Yard does
not exclude the landscape. The "wild"
area provides a large buffer zone between
our organic environment and the conventional
agricultural and residential areas outside
it. We hope that it will not become a
living museum of what was here before
the Europeans arrived.
You will see many tiny, light-green hopping
insects on your tour; in fact, if you
get close to a vine, some of them may
get into your eyes and nose. They seem
to be everywhere; they are. They are the
bane of Okanagan grape growing--the Virginia
Creeper Leafhopper (Latin nomenclature
Erythroneura zigzag Walsh, which sounds
like the name of a Celtic performance
artist, but then we did not really have
a say in it anyway). They have a complicated
life cycle that would take several pages
to describe. Adults and nymphs hop around
from leaf to leaf (grapes are not their
exclusive food; we also have them in abundance
on our Virginia Creeper vines, and our
gooseberry, raspberry and currant bushes)
feeding on the nutrient-rich juices in
the leaves. Their damage won't kill a
plant, but the white-spotted leaves have
a reduced photosynthetic capacity, and
overall, the plant is weakened. In a conventional
Vine Yard, leafhoppers would be killed
by sprays of Sevin, Guthion or Endosulfan.
In our Vine Yard, our first line of defence
is the predatory Parasitic Wasp, which
resides and lunches on hoppers in the
wild rosebushes in the perimeter of the
Vine Yard. Our last resort is insecticide
soap, sprayed at a particular time during
larval development (the window of effectiveness
is very brief, and you'd better pray it's
not raining), on the underside of affected
leaves. You can guess which of the options
is preferred. You can also guess why we
have a large population of leafhoppers
almost every year. Will we eradicate them?
No. Do we want to? No. We would like to
keep the population in control though,
and we hope that, with more vigilant application
of soap, we will do so. In the meantime,
I take a grim pleasure in washing them
off the gooseberry bush with a high-pressure
spray of water. And then I do it again
the next morning. And the next.
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