Weeds and More Weeds

P1040793When you have a vineyard, everyone always says how romantic! Well, if you don’t work year round you pay for it later. In the fall/early winter we finished the back landscaping, took a trip to Forks, WA and had company for Christmas. So……didn’t get to weeding except for 3 days…..about 5 hours worth. After an unexpected trip, I’m back at it again. I hope that if I can get it under control it will be a lot better this year than last year.

Above are before and after photo’s of just the weeding.

After weeding real vineyard work begins. I get to remove the grow tubes and prune to 2 buds!!! Then all spring/summer tie the vines.

Here is my strategy:

1. Hand weed all of the big weeds that are in the vine rows
2. Weed whack what is left in the vine rows
3. Mow
4. Flame in the vine rows
5. Repeat #3 and #4

My guess is it will take me about 45 hours to weed the vineyard and about 8 hours to weed whack and another 8 hours to flame and 2 hours to mow. The flaming and mowing will probably be done at least 6 times in 2011.

Flaming flaming tool
Status so far for weeding:
2010 5 hours
2011
1/10 1.5
1/11 2.0
1/12 3.0 1 hour weed whacking I’m 25% done with weeding
1/14 3.25
1/17 1.0
1/18 1.0 1.5 hours mowing
1/19 1.75 1 hour mowing, .75 hour weed whacking
1/24 6.0 +24 hours of “Graton Labor” help
1/25 4.0 +16 hours “Graton Labor” help, 2 hours (+8) of grow tube removal
1/26 0.0 4 hours of grow tube removal

Weeding 28.5 hours weeding + 40 hours “Graton Labor” = 68.5 hours
Now weed whacking and flaming to keep it looking good!!!
1/27 2 hours collecting bad grow tubes, 2 hours collecting weeds from row
1/28 1 hour collecting weeds from rows, 4.5 hours weed whacking
1/29 1 hour collecting weeds from rows
1/30
1/31 4.5 hours weed whacking
2/7 1.5 hours collecting weeds, 1 hour flaming
2/8 1.5 hours collecting weeds, .75 hours flaming
2/9 .75 hours flaming, .4 hours mowing
2/10 1.5 hours flaming, .3 hours mowing
2/12 1 hours flaming, 1.5 hour mowing, 5 hours collecting weeds

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