This summer I will also be scouting for grape developmental stages and for insect damage on grapes at the West Madison Agricultural Research Station. Once things start to warm up over the next month, we will also provide pictures and notes regarding the development stages reached by several grape varieties in each newsletter. We’ll include information about the following wine grape varieties: Marquette, Frontenac, La Crescent, and Brianna. We will also include information about table grape developmental stages – to begin with I will be scouting Baltica as the earliest developing variety at WMARS.

This week, we visited the vineyards on a blustery and cold, although sunny, day. All buds were still in the dormant stage, which is good news, as temperatures are still dropping well below freezing at times, but is likely to change pretty quickly if this week’s temperatures in the 50s and 60s will continue. Although not much is happening yet, here are some pictures from our trip, demonstrating Brianna variety wine grape and Baltica variety table grape buds, still fully dormant, and with no visible growth. Over the rest of the summer I will provide photos and information about Marquette, Frontenac, La Crescent, Brianna, and Baltica varieties, but for now it is sufficient to say all are still fully dormant.

I expect that by next issue these buds will look a little different!

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This article was posted in Grapes, WFN, Vol. 1-4 and tagged Janet van Zoeren.