Vineyard Pests!!!! - er,...this is where it gets good -

Doing alot of updating on the vines in St. Louis, Missouri. Things are great. Went for a journey into the city with a good buddy of mine, noted plenty of re-development all throughout south St. Louis (not by 'Peppers' south-side bar on Gravois). I only mean south of Olive Blvd and areas southwest of that region, east of the Missouri Botanical Garden.

Anyway, I tried to look again for the pesky Japanese Beetle. Instead I discovered an infestation by what appear to be a kind of Aphid. I have photos to accompany this posting.

The first photograph really sets the stage. I had seen this yesterday when I visited the vine for the first time since March 2010. The first photo displays the end result of what I think is the product of what the bugs in the following photos achieve after dining on a 7 course meal on the grape vine with their friends, families, and the one dude they drank beers with the night before, who also just happened to crash on the couch: he's the kind of person you can't shake with a clean conscience, once you learn more about how far he is gone.  And, as with most short-term acquaintances, there is a certain charm to any human that thinks and acts in a strange, unusual way.  He doesn't do too well at any of the eateries along Division Street just east of Damen Avenue and west of Damen Avenue where all of the copies congregate, talking shapes, sizes, measurements......that's a tangent entirely unrelated to grape vines.




These bugs resemble the size of Aphids. I didn't spy any ladybugs around to counter with an attack. Actually, I kind of expected to see this kind of situation on my Fava Beans in Chicago, IL, not on the grape vine in St. Louis. Either way, this is a good experience. The jury is still out for this household. Surely there is one option of spraying Sevin dust on the vine from Ortho. I just don't want to go there if I can avoid doing so. We took the steps of cutting out as much of the vine that had the infestation as possible (all of which was actually outside of the bird netting, strangely enough and/or convenient, too). By doing this, I actually expect the existing grape clusters to receive greater nutrition from what used to go to the vines that we trimmed. In trimming we were able to fill up a 5-gallon bucket of cuttings. I also lopped a nearly 28 inch long green cutting. Just amazing things have happened to this vine in the past four months. Remarkable.

Either way, Chicago has about 45 heat days left before September 1 2010. For St. Louis, I would wager that they have about 55-60 actual heat days left in their growing season. I might be way off the mark in my estimation here. No matter, when I consider my outdoor vines in Chicago, both of which are Syrah vines that were planted in the soil around Sept 1 2009, and in consideration of how much they have grown in the past 3 weeks, I think I will have a nice sampling as the autumn weather begins to encroach and visit itself upon the Upper Midwest around Chicagoland.

Part of my excitement is that the Syrah vines that are now green will begin to undergo the process of becoming wood-like (I would imagine I'll learn what this process will be called properly when school begins).  As I indicated in the previous two posts, the wood on the Cabernet Sauvignon vine in St. Louis is beautiful and reveals weathering and maturing.