A friend of mine has just inherited a Wine Vineyard, the past generations have heavily relied on chemical spraying, and left the vineyard in not such a good condition. ,
It`s a pure mono culture vineyard, with bare ground below the vines.
He would like to change no poison using and Regenerative farming to clean up his Soil asap, but not lose crops for to many seasons as his Wine production is his main income.
Any ideas out there what would be best way of going about cleaning up his Vineyard?
my experience has been with renting a house that had been abandoned, with vines that were similarly abandoned: getting the vines back on a care/pruning schedule caused dramatic results, so that's a start.
Chemical spraying was to eliminate either bugs or fungus, right, so if it were bugs/slugs I`d love to see ducks or chickens running through the vineyard! Fungus might be a little harder. Sheep also are common partners, assuming you can stop them from eating the vines.
Does your friend know how to compost? This is a good place to start.
As the grapevines are trimmed the trimming can go into a compost pile.
Invasive plants are Earth's way of insisting we notice her medicines. Stephen Herrod Buhner
Everyone learns what works by learning what doesn't work. Stephen Herrod Buhner
How big is the vineyard? Here in Oregon to make a living on grapes you would probably be looking at 20+ acres minimum - maybe half that if you also made wine. The scale will dictate what options are viable for management.
Also, climate will play a role. Wetter areas have more problems with fungus, and without completely changing varietals, his best bet will likely be to transition to an organic spray program. You can grow grapes without spraying them, and some years you might even be able to sell them; but if they are a major source of income, it is important to get a saleable crop nearly every year.
Maintaining a monoculture will make sense at all but the smallest scale. It is possible to grow crops between rows of wine grapes, but only if the spacing was set up for that at the start. Vines dont generally need irrigation, and in dry sites it is customary to try and keep bare ground below the trellises to promote yield. It can be done mechanically, or it can be let go to grass and then mowed if there is enough moisture.
Vineyards also dont last forever. As the vines age they lose production and accumulate injuries. They can be kept alive for a hundred years or more, but for a commercial operation 25 to 30 years is more likely.
Anyway, my point is that there is not going to be a simple answer to this question. The best bet would be to find a local organic grape grower to discus this with.
I grew up driving tractors and pruning grapevines in the grape growing industry in Northern California. My father, may he gently rest in peace, was a wonderful person and a really skilled grape rancher...who hated Rachel Carson. I was very young at the time, I but know for a fact that he used DDT up until the day it was banned in 1972. Worldwide, many vineyards and wineries are switching over to organic, biodiverse practices. If your friend truly wants to go this route, he first needs to dive headfirst into research, and then into actual farming practices, starting with soil regeneration. This will not be a one growing season adaptation, but a years' long enhancement process. He also needs to be careful that he doesn't kill his vines or his crops, especially if he is counting on this income. At the very least, cutting off chemical fertilizer without a replacement plan could seriously impact his grape production for one to two years. Depending on the yield the vineyard is getting now, this could mean a lot of money. Bravo to him for taking this on.
Most people aren't aware of the incredible amount of nasty chemicals that are poured onto grapevines and into the soil and then it seeps into the grapes, and into the wine. It also runs off into streams, rivers and sometimes out to oceans. They've found specific vineyard chemicals that have killed salmon to the point of almost extinction in Northern California.
We could literally throw a rock from our property lines in California to three large vineyards surrounding our house and land. From the moment the vines budded out with new growth in the spring, farmworkers suited up in haz mats and drove their tractors weekly through the rows of vines spraying insecticides, herbicides, spreading chemical fertilizers, etc. We would close the windows in the evening when we heard the whine of the equipment coming our way. A thick, white haze would envelope our house. Other non-vineyard owning neighbors complained as this heavy chemical use became more and more prevalent as the years went on.
Five years ago, I developed asthma and began to have other health issues as I had now lived a lifetime of being around nasty chemicals. We started figuring out where--what area, what state--we wanted to move to even though it meant leaving family, giving up good jobs, and leaving a drop dead beautiful area. We had day jobs but also had a 5-acre olive ranch as well, and we had our olives milled for oil. We were organic, but bought one natural product from the local chemical "dealer". And I mean that in a drug dealer insinuation way. Chemical companies push chemicals onto farmers to produce more grapes with less insect damage, pay for less tractor fuel and manpower in weed suppression, etc. to increase their profits.
Nice guy, but I'm still reeling from what he told me about the insecticides that were being put on the vineyards surrounding our house, specifically by his clients. Immediately after he told me how insecticides worked, we went into selling/moving overdrive. Apparently, insecticides are absorbed by insects through breathing and soft skin areas. Then the bug develops breathing problems and suffocates and dies. Ya, we all know they die. That's why they were invented. And this wasn't news to me having grown up in the business.
But having this salesman stand there with a grin on his face, knowing he was selling this death chemical, knowing my husband and I were breathing it Every Day of the year because insecticides take forever to break down and are lying on top of the ground year round, blowing in the wind, knowing I was desperate to control my asthma and constantly having it morph into pneumonia which meant frantic trips to the emergency room because I couldn't breathe and needed oxygen...totally freaked me out. Just as I was thinking he was a total tool for not caring he was selling death, he got serious and direct. "You live too close to these vineyards. You need to move. Asap." We did. And now live in the clean air and beautiful mountains of the Mid Atlantic on the East Coast and are much healthier for it.
If your friend is really serious, there is a whole raft of information out there: books, online groups and farmers and winemakers who are passionate about organic and biodiverse viticulture. He needs to immediately learn about cover crops like sweet peas and mustard, which are some of the few plants that introduce more nitrogen than they remove from the soil, daikon radishes that are excellent for de-compacting the soil, other enhanced biodiversity practices, minimized soil erosion, weed control, fertilizing the soil without chemicals, and improving the structure and microbial activity of the soil.
After harvest, pruned vine spurs and canes can be composted, but it takes quite awhile--they are as hard as tree branches. And, you don't want to just prune and leave them in the rows. Even if you go totally no till, which can be done but needs to be done carefully so as not to stress the vines, having years and years of hard canes in the middle of grapevine rows would make grape picking problematic for human grape pickers--not to mention machine grape picking--and getting the picked grapes out of the vineyard. Planting cover crops, as mentioned above, is a much faster and much more prolific way to improve the soil. It would take a heck of a lot of compost to make a dent in the soil in even a single, short row of vines.
If I had one piece of advice to give, it would be to have the vineyard owner get in touch with small organic/biodiverse farmers or winery owners and make a plea for shared knowledge. While preferable in the same climate zone, anywhere in the world could be useful. Trust me, if a vineyard or winery is doing it, or even halfway there to organic certification, they are talking about it on their website. And, by looking at these websites, you get a feel as to just how long and complex a process it is to make the changeover.
Best of luck to your friend!
OIP.jpg
A photo of vineyards near our former property in Sonoma County, California. It killed us 5 years ago to leave our home in this beautiful grape growing region. But then, all the chemicals being used on the grapevines were killing us anyway...
Telling me it can't be done is my biggest motivation to making it happen.
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