VASCM: Hedging???

[kenneth]

Hi All,

We have Chardonnay in its 4th growing season and this will be our first harvest.  The vines are very vigorous even though we have not watered yet this season.  We had a petiole analysis done earlier in the season and everything looked fine. We have good fruit set, have the canes well trained to the vertical, and have pulled leaves in the fruit zone. However, the vines are so vigorous that we have canes 10-12’ tall that we have piled on top of each other on the trellis (but this doesn’t seem right because many of the canes and leaves are buried) and many are hanging off the trellis (VSP) shading the fruit.   We will be pulling fruit to 1 -2 clusters per cane soon. See photo below.

We feel like we should be hedging to 15-20 leaves per cane but getting widely different opinions on hedging at this time.

We would love to know what you are doing, or would be doing if this was your vineyard.

Thanks for your input.

Kenneth & Gillian Challenger
Iron Rose Vineyards

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