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AWARD WINNING ORGANICALLY PRODUCED WINES |
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| Weed
Control |
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Controlling weeds begins
with a determination of what is a weed
and what is not. "Weed" is such
an ugly word, and in common parlance,
has come to be applied to any plant that
appears as an unwanted volunteer. It doesn't
seem to matter, in this definition, that
the volunteer is a native plant and part
of a balanced system that existed before,
and continues to exist despite drastic
human intervention. Human agricultural
crops, be they wheat or grapevines, can
upset the balance, particularly if we
strive to make them a monoculture to the
exclusion of everything that was there
before. Are weeds the bane of existence,
requiring in their eradication extraordinary
time, expense and technology, or are they
part of a thriving, healthy ecosystem
from which we hope to derive a farming
income?
We should provide a caveat here; the
weeds in our Vine Yard are not as controlled
as we'd like them to be. Our problem plant
is quack grass, which spreads by means
of rhizomes. The root masses are nearly
impenetrable, even with a cultivator.
In the spring, after pruning (the prunings
are scattered between the rows), we mow
and mulch both prunings and plant growth
between the rows. During the growing season
the space between rows will be cultivated
2 or 3 times to disrupt the grass growth
and till organic material into the soil.
Grass growth between the vines in the
row is another matter; despite experimentation
with all manner of exotic plows, we still
haven't found a practical, affordable
method of removing the grass that won't
damage the vine roots. We could burn it,
or we could boil it with a blast of high-pressure
hot water. Both of these alternatives,
however, strike us as physically dangerous
and extremely inefficient ways of consuming
labour and carbon fuels.
But what if we ever did manage to achieve
that picture postcard perfect Vine Yard
with vines twining out of bare soil? We'd
potentially face erosion, pests, poor
nutrition and soil conditioning, and moisture
loss. The use of cover crops is now accepted,
even in the most conventional of Vine Yards,
as a way of dealing with many of these
problems. Our reaction: why seed a cover
crop when nature creates one for us, every
year? Is all of that stuff between the
rows a cover crop, or weeds, and what's
the difference anyway?
Whatever the answer to that question,
cover crops in the Vine Yard do need to
be managed, because they can rob the vines
of needed moisture and nutrition. We can
take some comfort that in a mature Vine Yard
like ours, the vines are less likely to
suffer serious harm from their competitors.
Eventually, we'll be seeding a nitrogen-fixing,
legume crop in every second or third row.
Crown vetch, anyone?
In the end, we come back to one of the
tenets of organic agriculture; we work
with nature, not against it. The aim is
to minimize the human footprint and if
possible, to provide a net benefit for
current and future inhabitants. Inhabitants
on our property include a wonderful diversity
of flora and fauna, everything from the
rare and beautiful Mariposa Lily to the
unwelcome leafhopper, and it also just
happens to include us and a bunch of grapevines,
too. Heck, we'll even leave a bit of space
for the quack grass! The cats love to
snack on it as a digestive after those
heavy mole meals. |
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