A bit of defoliation 2017

29 Jun 2017 – General

Flowering is over with, and the clusters now require more sun for the grape skins to toughen sufficiently.

We remove one or two leaves from each shoot in the cluster zone, along with the side shoots. Mind you, we do this only on the side that catches the morning sunlight, so the clusters gradually become accustomed to the sun without running the risk of sunburn.

Right now we can see how close we came to having serious troubles with frost; the first leaves often show damage from the late frost.