Summer finally arrives and flowering is fully underway

With temperatures at 30 degrees today and expected to be 35+ most of the week we are finally seeing the summer heat arrive. We are in the middle of flowering throughout the vineyard and have good fruit set in about half of the riesling. The number of clusters is much higher than we had originally thought but the plants seem healthy enough that weather permitting we will not have any problems ripening even a heavy crop load.

With the warmer weather we have had everything is growing more vigorously. The quicker growth rate helps to highlight the areas where we need to work on soil health. We are taking note of areas where growth is slower or leaves are lighter in colour for our fall soil remediation work. We will be applying compost to restore nutrients and seeding rye between the rows to build nitrogen levels. We will probably incorporate clover into the mix in the spring as it's tight growing helps to choke out unwanted weeds as well as fixing nitrogen levels.

We have been enjoying a bit of time to swim in the lake, bbq in the vineyard and explore some of the lesser travelled spots of the Okanagan in the last few weeks. The farmers market in Penticton has doubled in size and we are starting to see much more variety and quantity of fresh produce. We can do almost all of our grocery shopping there now which is nice because it is all local. We have been noticing that many of the farmers are young couples and siblings who are entering the farming industry with small organic operations. It is really nice to see our generation stepping into this industry.