[compost_tea] Weird wine grapes

From: Mike Benton <compost_at_mweb.co.za>
Date: Wed, 10 Dec 2003 20:26:18 +0200

Hi all.
I saw something today on one of my clients farms today which has me
scratching my head .I have a few suggestions but let me first describe the
situation .The client is a very large high profile wine far near my home in
the Cape .We are conducting a trial of about 10 Ha made up of Cabernet,ruby
cab and merlot .The soil is a clay /loam with big differences across the
area, pH is all over the place and so are the previous analyasis. We don't
yet have access to SFW testing so I cant quote any figures there. They
applied 30M3 per Ha of good compost and mulched this. About 2 weeks before
bud they began applying ACT at a rate of 75 ltHa per week through the
drippers, and every third or fourth week skip the soil application and
instead sprayed 150 lt on 1000 lt water per Ha >Very soon a marked {25/30%}
water saving was noted and the sprays were increased in frequency due to
limited amounts of irragation taking place. They where happy although the
farm manager felt that the vines where perhaps a few days behind, which this
year is an advantage because everything is late anyway.
Now for the odd bit. Late last week they began to notice things where a bit
odd ,the bunches in particular on the merlot and to a lesser degree on the
ruby cab and even less on the cab sav,have elongated ,beginning to see a
pink to red tinge on the upper stems and shoots, the stems seem to take on
a rectangle like shape and on the berries a scab/scar? like mark often with
cracking. Berries are uneven in size and sometimes even bigger than normal,
something sometimes seen in table grapes treated with ACT.
The tea contains the following
20lt good compost
10lt vermicasts
2.5 lt of each of the following
Molasses
Humic acid
Kelpak {kelp extract }
Seagro{fish emulsion}
and 1/2 lt Fulvic acid
on 1200 lt water with fantastic aeration for 18 hours.
This recipe has been used by more than 15 other clients on fruit and wine
with only good results.
My suspesions are either one or any combination of the following factors
Gibberellins from the kelp along with its auxins and cytokines are
stimulating towards growth, why then into the woody parts of the stems and
not into the foliage which is definatly not lush?, the newly arrived micro
organisms have mobilised the old nutrients and caused rapid growth, if so
why this type of growth?,Detoxic shock like we go through when cleansing our
bodies, or even that small amount of Fulvic was increasing the uptake of the
increased foliar applications, if so why only now and only on this farm?
This post has got long enough ,so I will cut it short.
I will be grateful for all or any thoughts because there are a lot of people
with a lot of grape years behind them scratching their heads :)

Regards
Mike Benton
Compost Technologies
mike_at_composttea.co.za mobile 0823345371


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Received on Wed Dec 10 2003 - 15:03:27 EST

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