Planting

April, a month of blue skies and pleasant breezes, has come to an end.

Red maple buds and golden willow catkins against an April sky.

In the vineyard, the vines are doing exactly what we want them to do in this pleasant, amiable month:

Slumbering.

Those who grow grapes for a living track the phenology, or growth stages, of the vines each season with something known as the Eichorn-Lorenz scale. Right now, we are at what's known as the doeskin stage of bed swell: the buds are swollen, but not open, with brownish wool clearly visible.

A "doeskin" bud on the verge of burst.

A few more warm sunny afternoons, and the first tender green leaves will emerge.

In Canton, Ohio, we are subject to potential spring freezes well into May, so it's reassuring to have reached the end of April and find our emerging grape leaves still tightly folded, insulated with doe skin.

The only green grape leaves we see so far are on a few baby plants we propagated in the greenhouse over the winter, ready to move from protected shelter to the great outdoors.

A young Vignoles vine propagated over the winter from a dormant cutting.

So in the lull while we await the unfurling of  leaves out in the real world, we find ourselves looking ahead to a few harvests down the road:

We are planting bare root grape plants, which won't bear fruit for another two to three seasons.

The soil is finally warm enough, and we dig a big enough hole in the crumbly loam to accommodate the ample roots of bare root plants we received in the mail.

A bundle of bare root Vignoles vines awaits transplant.

The wine grapes we have chosen to establish in our vineyard have proven remarkably hardy, but every year there are just a few that don't make it, and need replaced. With several acres and thousands of vines, even just a fraction of a percent of loss can mean several pleasant April days of digging, and planting.

In the vineyard, the leaves emerge before the subtle yellow grape flowers, which we likely won't see until June.

But in the orchard, flowers precede the leaves, so we close April enjoying apple and pear blossoms decorating each tree.

Pear blossoms in the orchard.

With the turn of the calendar page, tomorrow ushers in a month of even more rapid growth and change.

In May, doeskin will give way to delicate pink and light green grape leaves, which if they survive a late frost, will grow into the enormous tough leaves and rampant shoots we will struggle all season to contain.

In the vineyard, it's always just a little bit hard to let pleasant April go, even as we plant for future bountiful harvests.

Wild apple blossoms decorate a fence row.