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GRAPE GRO WING Highlights • Farmer-to-farmer exchange of informa- tion was essential in blending traditional head-pruned vineyard management with modern methods. • Growers using organic and sustainable winegrowing want to improve environmen- tal quality in their vineyards. • Building soil organic matter is the core belief of organic farming in terms of crop health and vitality. • Organic growers showed that nature could control many problems, and spraying wasn't always needed. (they thought erosion was just part of farming and that grapevines didn't really need fertilizer.) They tilled the soil multiple times, even using rototillers to give everything a clean look. Since the target sugar levels were lower, they didn't worry too much about mites or other things that might delay harvest. Many older vineyards had overhead frost protection, and the grower would sprinkler irrigate around the end of June, maybe again at veraison, and called it good. Clearly, this alone wasn't going to work with the more modern viticulture techniques that productive, intensively farmed vineyards required to function well. Through various innovations, trials and errors, the organic winegrowers were able to solve many of the puzzles of how to convert their acreage from conventional to organically certified. Amazingly, there were few cases where the crops were damaged or lost due to the transition to organic growing. The approach proved to be a viable one and improved as more information, crop protectants and experience became available to the organic winegrowing community. Some of the techniques that the new, modern organic winegrowers were learning were useful to all of the winegrape industry, and it influenced another important group of growers who wanted to farm in a more environmentally friendly way but didn't necessarily want to be organic. These growers started farming using sustainable techniques, and again, the exchange of farmer-to-farmer information was very important as they began to modify techniques to improve environmental quality in their vineyards. These are some of the important practices that organic growers were focused on that also benefitted conventional growers: Using cover crops When I started as a University of California Cooperative Extension farm advisor in 1987, it was widely accepted that clean tillage was the best way to manage a vineyard floor. Traditionally, cover crops were pretty much limited to mustard and whatever winter annual weeds germinated in the spring. There was intensive experimentation in the late 1980s and early 1990s that changed many growers' vineyard floor management practices. These ranged from planting a variety of cover crops including annual legume and grass mixtures to provide nitrogen for vines, self-reseeding annuals that grew only in the winter and protected the soil on slopes as well as perennial grasses that could help slow down very vigorous vines. The 1998 publication of "Cover Cropping in Vineyards—A 18th Annual Central Coast Insights Program Presented by the Wine Industry Financial Symposium Group March 15, 2012, Embassy Suites, San Luis Obispo "How Will the Central Coast Wine Industry Become Globally Viable?" For a full program, visit our website on January 16th. The program will be posted and the registration will be open. www.winesymposium.com Wines & Vines FeBRUARY 2012 67