Monday, October 1, 2018
Fall 2018 Farm Tour
Our fall farm tour recorded yesterday. Some lessons from a cooler than normal, wetter than normal summer and some surprises in the vineyard.
Sunday, March 25, 2018
Solitude Springs Farm & Vineyard Fall 2017 Tour
Just realized we didn't share our Fall Farm Tour from last year. Here it is:
2017 Growing Season and Our New Direction
After the cold 2016 fall (-12F/-24C and little snowcover)
and -41F (-41C) in January of 2017, it was no surprise that we saw a lot of
winter damage. Blackberry production was down dramatically (though Marionberry
came through and gave us enough berries for some wine). Numerous
less-than-Alaska-hardy apple trees, pear trees and stone fruits did not flower
and some barely produced any growth at all last summer. On the other hand, red,
white and some black currants did wonderfully well. Again, we harvested enough
to make wine . . . and then some. A real surprise was the survival of our
Cascade Delight raspberries! Only the tallest canes exhibited cold damage to
the tips, so we had strong production from these plants. The wasps seemed to
like them, too, and we found ourselves having to share. Some red raspberry wine
is in the works at the moment. We also saw production from several varieties of
gooseberries. A real treat at the end of the summer.
We added some goji
berry plants to our collection as a test. Some varieties grow well in southern
Canada and, considering their health qualities, we thought we’d try them. We
also continue to work with arctic and arguta kiwis to see if we can get
anything to overwinter and produce fruit. Our cherry patch saw some expansion,
as well. The Northstar cherries continue to produce a little fruit, but nothing
else apparently is old enough to fruit yet. When the entire patch reaches
bearing age, we expect to get gallons of tart cherries. Cherry wine, anyone?
The bulk of last summer
was spent planting the 100s of plants we already had. It was a busy summer to
say the least. We managed to get all but a few raspberries in the ground. That
means we now have a vineyard!!!! Okay, so most of the grapevines won’t produce
ripe fruit, but we do have some promising Vitis amurensis vines out there. One, which we refer to as Amur-1, budded out
in mid-May and was completely dormant (lignified wood and all) by the end of
September. This particular seedling is 4 years old and
has suffered through quite a bit of drought stress, having survived two summers
in a patch of alders (notorious for their high water consumption). Now that it
is in the vineyard, we expect it to be much more vigorous. Another variety we are watching is Zilga. Preliminary pruning last weekend showed that at least half of the 18-inch 46 cm) cane had viable buds on it! The rest of the cane was likely too small in diameter to survive any amount of cold anyway. This is clearly the most growth we have seen harden off and survive a winter. This grape variety has been known to ripen fruit outdoors at 63 degrees north latitude in Finland. While we're not in Finland, nor quite that far south (almost 65 north here) there's still hope. Our plan is to train
all grapevines up 7ft/215cm bamboo stakes to see which ones might harden off
wood and to test the winter hardiness of Amur-1. The V. amurensis species is
typically hardy to between -30 and -40F (-35 to -40C). Our goal right now is to
use Amur-1 or a similar V. amurensis seedling in breeding to create ultra-ultra
early ripening grapes suitable for our 750 growing degree day (GDD, base
50F)/425 growing degree day (GDD, base 10C) climate. Currently available grape
cultivars are limited to climates that accumulate 1250 GDD (base 50F)/700 GDD
(base 10C) or more of heat. Thus, we need grape varieties that ripen in half
the heat required by currently available varieties. Is this possible? We intend
to find out.
A major shift in
focus occurred this past summer here on the farm. We realized that relying
entirely on the sale of fruit (though local fruit is in high demand) would not
support the farm in the long run. In addition, the thought of having to compost
good fruit when it didn’t sell was less than appealing. The other option was to
make wine instead of sell fresh fruit. We could simply freeze most of the fruit
we harvest until it is time to make wine (during the winter/spring months!!).
Grapes don’t quite fit this model, but we are a few years away from having to
deal with that, anyway. Hence, while we have intended to start a winery for a
few years, it is now imperative. This past winter we began honing our
wine-making skills on several batches of fruit wines (raspberry, blackberry,
serviceberry, etc.). Some are turning out quite good!
This past winter we
also made our second batch of (wild) high bush cranberry wine. It turns out
that high bush cranberries really like our food forest (orchard-like area with
berries intermixed). It took us only 3.5 hours to pick three pounds of these
berries as opposed to the 3 days required in the past. From past experience, we know that this
powerful wine needs 3 years in the bottle to mellow out. However, at that point
it is quite nice.
What about the
peonies you ask? Well, over the last two summers the farm has seen lots of rain
that has made the transportation of materials in and out very difficult. In
addition, prices for cut peonies have fallen dramatically over the last several
years and with the expense of required infrastructure that would have to be
installed, peonies no longer appear to be a profitable crop on the farm.
Moreover, their sensitivity to disease and lack of tolerance for our weather
conditions (heavy rain, hail and wind) make it a risky venture at best. We will
be selling our remaining roots locally over the next few years. This is really
too bad, because our farm is one of just a few locations that can produce the
much-sought-after coral peonies.
This spring we have
purchased far fewer plants than in past years as we change from primarily a
research farm to a production farm. Now that we know what grows well here and
what has good potential, we will be weeding out the unproductive stuff in favor
of plants that will produce fruit for high quality wines – especially those fruits
that can’t be grown elsewhere in the area. And, while the construction of a
winery is still a few years off, hopefully it won’t be too long before we are
sharing the “fruits” of our labor with the world!
Saturday, April 1, 2017
2017 Plant Sale
Our 9th annual plant sale is tentatively set for May 20th, 21st, 27th and 29th. We are about halfway through planting seeds and have included new varieties and more basil (at the request of customers). Prices will be 6-packs=$3.00, 3-inch pots=$1.50 and gallon pots=$6.00. There will be a discount for full trays (12 6-packs).
A complete list of varieties will be posted on the Fairbanks Craigslist site in a few weeks.
Spring Has Sprung!
Yesterday (March 31) was only the fifth day since the first of the year that the temperature had risen above freezing. However, the forecast is for above freezing temperature, at least during the day, for the foreseeable future. Breakup is just around the corner . . . and then comes the growing season!!
While our winter was "a bit above normal" temperature wise, we still racked up 76 days where the temperature fell below zero here in thehills. In comparison, during the "polar vortex" plagued winter of 2013-2014, Minneapolis, MN, accumulated just 50 days below zero. To explain why many grapevines in the region died and most growers had no crop the following summer, it was noted that with so much cold "the grapevines just gave up!" Hmm, doesn't bode well for our vines here on the farm. Nevertheless, we continue to experiment and have adopted a new motto: "It's not if we can grow <insert plant>, but how". Where there's a will, there has got to be a way. Here is a picture of one of our Ivan grapevines that we uncovered last weekend. It had been under 30 inches (76 cm) of snow. The coldest the bottom buds experienced this last winter was -12F (-24C) in November before the snowpack developed. As this variety has shown survival down to -25F (-32C) in Minnesota, there is a good chance that buds survived. We'll have to wait and see, though.
With breakup comes the need to start stockpiling water for plants. We have been busy melting snow in containers to fill our tanks and trash cans. Granted, it has been a slow process until just this week. Now that the nights aren't getting that cold, the melting snow should remain as water and not refreeze at night. We'll move this water to one of our larger storage tanks and continue melting more until we have about 2000 gallons (7500 l) stored. Hopefully, that will get us most of the way through our dry period.
We are experimenting with growing cut flowers (besides our peonies) this year. Not sure how all of this will go. We are also looking at growing early season strawberries to lengthen our harvest season of fruit. Nothing typically ripens before mid-July and so we are hoping to start at least a month earlier with strawberries. Not wanting to add to the harvest pressure late in the summer, we'll be focusing on "June bearing" strawberries, which only fruit for a few weeks early in the season. These and early season cut flowers would benefit from a high tunnel and so that may be on the horizon, though we need to figure out financially how that fits in with the construction of a winery.
A new farm tour will be out soon, we promise - though another tour in late April will give a good picture of winter survival and summer production.
We will also be adding our farm to the "Interior Grown Agriculture Directory". For this year, we will probably only list raspberries, but will be adding to the list of available items as our production increases (think apples, cherries, serviceberries, aronia . . . and of course blackberries and grapes) and our experience grows.
Consider liking us on Facebook (Solitude Springs Farm & Vineyard), as we post more frequently there.
Time to go plant seeds and pot up rooted grape cuttings!
While our winter was "a bit above normal" temperature wise, we still racked up 76 days where the temperature fell below zero here in thehills. In comparison, during the "polar vortex" plagued winter of 2013-2014, Minneapolis, MN, accumulated just 50 days below zero. To explain why many grapevines in the region died and most growers had no crop the following summer, it was noted that with so much cold "the grapevines just gave up!" Hmm, doesn't bode well for our vines here on the farm. Nevertheless, we continue to experiment and have adopted a new motto: "It's not if we can grow <insert plant>, but how". Where there's a will, there has got to be a way. Here is a picture of one of our Ivan grapevines that we uncovered last weekend. It had been under 30 inches (76 cm) of snow. The coldest the bottom buds experienced this last winter was -12F (-24C) in November before the snowpack developed. As this variety has shown survival down to -25F (-32C) in Minnesota, there is a good chance that buds survived. We'll have to wait and see, though.
With breakup comes the need to start stockpiling water for plants. We have been busy melting snow in containers to fill our tanks and trash cans. Granted, it has been a slow process until just this week. Now that the nights aren't getting that cold, the melting snow should remain as water and not refreeze at night. We'll move this water to one of our larger storage tanks and continue melting more until we have about 2000 gallons (7500 l) stored. Hopefully, that will get us most of the way through our dry period.
We are experimenting with growing cut flowers (besides our peonies) this year. Not sure how all of this will go. We are also looking at growing early season strawberries to lengthen our harvest season of fruit. Nothing typically ripens before mid-July and so we are hoping to start at least a month earlier with strawberries. Not wanting to add to the harvest pressure late in the summer, we'll be focusing on "June bearing" strawberries, which only fruit for a few weeks early in the season. These and early season cut flowers would benefit from a high tunnel and so that may be on the horizon, though we need to figure out financially how that fits in with the construction of a winery.
A new farm tour will be out soon, we promise - though another tour in late April will give a good picture of winter survival and summer production.
We will also be adding our farm to the "Interior Grown Agriculture Directory". For this year, we will probably only list raspberries, but will be adding to the list of available items as our production increases (think apples, cherries, serviceberries, aronia . . . and of course blackberries and grapes) and our experience grows.
Consider liking us on Facebook (Solitude Springs Farm & Vineyard), as we post more frequently there.
Time to go plant seeds and pot up rooted grape cuttings!
Sunday, December 25, 2016
Solitude Springs Farm & Vineyard 2016 Year in Review
A nice summary slide show highlighting events and accomplishments this summer and fall. Enjoy.
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