Planting is a Lot of Work

It took us longer than we had ever expected it would take, but we are finally done with the planting of Block 1 & 2!

I'll warn you upfront, this article has more pictures (because I wanted to share our work with you) than it will have words.

Block 1 & 2 planting is done. It took a lot longer than expected and it was 3 times more work than we ever expected it to be too.

Let me explain… We started by drilling all of the holes for the vines and the line posts, over 350 holes. That was our first mistake, it took a day and a half to get that work done… And then it rained!

In a 3 day period of time we received over 4.5″ of rain. Needless to say, all the rain filled in just about every hole with a combination of mud, silt, and water which required bailing out the water and re-digging the holes. That was not a fun task to have to undertake but everyone pitched in, working hard, to get the vines planted before they spent too much time in the shipping container.

Then it rained again…

The delays were going to be too much, to allow the vines to set in their shipping container, so we split each bundle of vines in to batches of 25 and planted them together in several of the mud filled holes until the ground dried out enough for us to be able to move them to their permanent homes. Once the weather cooperated and we got a reprieve from all the rain we were once again able to dig up the bundles and plant 25 plants before moving on to the next batch.

Lesson learned, dig the holes and plant the vines one row at a time. It probably would have saved us a lot of time and made the job a lot less stressful.

It was messy work, but in retrospect, we had a lot of fun and it looks like all of the vines are going to survive the planting delays from all of the rain.

So as promised, here are some great pictures we want to share with everyone thinking that running a vineyard is glamorous work… And to help us remember how much FUN we had!

BTW – those “Blue Tubes” you see on the vines actually promote the growth of the vines as well as protecting them from the weather elements and pests.