During the last two weeks we have experienced several days with minimum temperatures above freezing (32 °F). These overall warmer temperatures have resulted in deacclimation of buds. To monitor changes in bud cold hardiness, we routinely sample buds from our experimental vineyards at the West Madison Agricultural Research Station and measure their cold hardiness using a method called differential thermal analysis (DTA). Data provided in the table and graph below correspond to the lethal temperature in which 50% of buds would experience injury (LT50).

This article was posted in Grapes and tagged cold climate grapes, cold hardiness.