QUESTION: What steps are you taking to improve the quality of your crops?

• Hired consultant, in-house training to convince managers and travel to Australia, France, Italy, Chile, Argentina, California and New York.

• Adapt and change with the market and industry.

• Always looking.  A better fertilizing and IPM program.

• Balanced canopy management. Irrigation. Fruit maturity.

• Been practicing organic farming for roughly a dozen years.

• Better nutrition, pruning, continuing education classes and reading.

• Building soil health.

• Changing varieties, more detail growing procedures, adding input into the growing aspect from customers.

• Composting, cover crops and minimal use of pesticides.

• Constantly monitoring to make adjustments that will allow us to produce the best crops possible.  Recently changed trellis design.

• Drawing in more beneficials to combat the pests. Putting in cover crops. Backing off of insecticides unless needed. Irrigating more fugal at better timings.

• Enhanced communication via databases, etc.

• Field mapping and fertilizer monitoring.

• Improved pruning and irrigation.

• Innovative trellis design, rotation of vine rows to the 1:00 PM position, increasing plant spacing, planting improved clones, lowering crop levels, providing better chemical analysis to improve harvest decisions, hand harvest to eliminate leaves and poor fruit, close ties to winery personnel, irrigation planned to achieve desired wine qualities, and so on.

• Integrated Pest Management. Consultation with extension agents and crop management specialists.

• Lots of reading. Consulting with my neighbor who has been producing winegrapes and wine for almost 30 years now.

• Lots of steps, but more toward organic and bio-dynamic style growing. Acreage will still be kept in commercial style farming, although "softer" styles will be applied, due to winery requests.

• Myriad!  Matching varietal/clone to our site, orientation, training, pruning, canopy management, irrigation management, fertigation, integrated pest management, intelligent automation, cover crop selection, and on and on.

• Negotiating for higher prices.

• Planting new varieties or new rootstocks.

• Producing the end product which I can relate back to growing.

• Sustainable practices.

• Understand better the interplay between the environment, the climate and the crop.

• Very closely controlled irrigation; shoot thinning, training and hedging where necessary, using bird netting, strict fungicide regimen, Smart-Dyson trellising for vigorous varieties, hand-suckering, frequent maturity testing in fall to precisely time harvest, hand picking.

• Water and nutrient management.

• We're trying harder to get back the SAME seasonal workers every year, rather that having to constantly train new ones.

• Winemaker feedback, research and attending industry seminars.