• Home
  • About
    • History
  • Grape Varieties
    • Petite Pearl Grape
    • Crimson Pearl Grape
    • Verona Grape
    • T.P. 1-1-12 Grape
    • T.P. 2-3-51 Grape
  • Purchase Vines
  • Future Vines
  • Blog
  • Contact
Plocher Vines
  • Home
  • About
    • History
  • Grape Varieties
    • Petite Pearl Grape
    • Crimson Pearl Grape
    • Verona Grape
    • T.P. 1-1-12 Grape
    • T.P. 2-3-51 Grape
  • Purchase Vines
  • Future Vines
  • Blog
  • Contact

Thoughts, Ideas, Etc

Red Fall Color

12/14/2021

 
Brilliant red fall leaf color in Vitis amurensis.Picture
​One of the signatures of Vitis amurensis is its red fall color. I have a couple of amurensis vines in the vineyard and also a few amurensis hybrids that show red fall color.  A beautiful sight.  From a distance, their red leaves always pop out from the sea of green and yellow around them.

A Very Long Stem

12/10/2021

 
T.P. 4-2-12, a Petite Pearl seedling with extraordinarily long  cluster stems.
​On a few occasions, people who hand harvest Petite Pearl have complained about the short stems. So, one of the wonderful discoveries this summer was this seedling selection, T.P. 4-2-12, whose mother, ironically, is…… Petite Pearl!

Kilo Cluster

12/10/2021

 
Multi-stemmed cluster weighing 500-1000 grams on Plocher grape seledtion with Chinese table grape ancestry.
​On one of my trips to China, someone plopped a grape cluster in my hands for me to taste. As I held it in my hands it seemed to weigh about two kilos. Later he sent me pollen from this grape.  I used the pollen on one of our small-clustered, super hardy varieties. Here is the best of the progeny.  Beautiful, multi-stemmed cluster form and clusters typically 500-1000g.  And quite winter hardy. If it were only seedless!

Extreme Lateral Sinuses

7/27/2021

 
A Plocher grape seedling with leaves that have extreme deep lobes, reaching right down to the middle leaf vein.
Last summer, I noticed a seedling with leaves that have extremely deep lateral sinuses. As deep as you can get, right down to the middle leaf vein.  Is this a good trait? Well, the clusters hanging under these leaves would certainly receive more sunlight, a good thing in the north. Maybe you wouldn’t have to remove the basal leaves to get more light on them.  Also, you would probably have better air flow through the leaf canopy than in a vine with more complete leaves. This might reduce the incidence of rots and mildews. However, given the reduced leaf area of these leaves, would you need more leaves per shoot to support adequate fruit ripening?

    Author

    Tom Plocher, owner, Plocher Vines, LLC.

    Archives

    December 2021
    November 2021
    July 2021

    Categories

    All
    In The Vineyard
    Weird Science
    Wonderful Diversity

    RSS Feed

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.
  • Home
  • About
    • History
  • Grape Varieties
    • Petite Pearl Grape
    • Crimson Pearl Grape
    • Verona Grape
    • T.P. 1-1-12 Grape
    • T.P. 2-3-51 Grape
  • Purchase Vines
  • Future Vines
  • Blog
  • Contact