Veraison has begun!  The grapes have stared the process of turning purple and the sugar levels are rising. You don’t want the birds to find any early ripening grapes, they can ruin your crop in a heartbeat.  Yesterday we had a team lined up and started the process of netting our vineyard on Burma Rd., Ramona.  Four of us began at 7am. It was an interestingly cool and foggy morning which made it nice to work in.  The actual netting (we use extruded netting which is very light weight) was rolled over the top of 500 plants in less than 2 hours.  It was tough for the guys to hold the roll of net (which felt like several hundreds of pounds when rolled up in a 7 ft wide, 5,000 ft long roll) up over their heads and walk each row.  While they were doing the hard work, I replaced all of the old emitters with new ones and plugged all the holes in the irrigation line that were no longer needed.  We gave the vineyard a full day of much needed water.  Mike weed whacked the rows and in between each plant.  Weed management is crucial in vineyards and always seems to be the most difficult of tasks.  Once the netting had been placed and stretched over the vines, everyone went through and sealed them underneath with hog rings so as not to allow any openings for critters or birds to get in.  The clipping and sealing underneath is very time consuming. We only managed to complete half the vineyard yesterday after running out of hog rings. The supply store doesn’t open until Monday so we will complete the job then.