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Photo by Tom Walker
Vinetech
The machine plantings are the initial step in setting up this new vineyard for future automation, with perfectly straight vine rows and even spacing.
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Photo by Tom Walker
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Ready for another row, the planting machine is just about to drop into the soil.
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Photo by Tom Walker
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Workers connecting the dripline to the new irrigation system while others follow the planting machine ensuring the vines are straight.
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Photo by Tom Walker
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Workers hand load the bare-rooted dormant vines into the VineTech planter. The GPS receiver for the guidance system sits on an arm behind the tractor cab.
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Photo by Tom Walker
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Pinot Gris vines brought in from France ready to be loaded into the planter.
“The most we used to be able to plant by hand would be six to eight thousand vines on our very best day,” explains Wes Wiens, the owner of Vinetech from his head office in Niagara-on-the-Lake in Ontario. “And that was with a crew of 14 workers.”
The German-manufactured Wagner GPS planting machine can nearly triple that, he says. “Depending on the terrain, we can do somewhere between 18 to 20,000 vines now in a day, with a crew of four.”
This is the third year coming out west for the Vinetech crew. They are working land owned by Stewart Family Estates (SFE), which also owns Quail’s Gate Winery in West Kelowna. The company has three of the Wagner machines and works in Ontario, Quebec and Nova Scotia, as well.
In addition to SFE, they have also planted blocks for Phantom Creek and Corcelettes wineries. “A lot of BC vineyards are using GPS technology to set out irrigation systems,” says Wiens. “We can use those maps and the measurements to help with the most precise set up of the vines.”
Efficiency and crew size are important for Chad Douglas, Viticulturalist for SFE, as he is a bit behind where he’d like to be this year. “We were able to bring in all of the seasonal agriculture workers from Mexico that we had hoped for,” he says. "But one crew was under quarantine for two weeks in Vancouver and the extra precautions the company is taking to protect the workers in the current situation means everything takes a little bit longer.”
Time and labour are only part of the reason Douglas has brought in the Vinetech crew. The machine plantings are the initial step in setting up this new vineyard for future automation, he explains. “There is a lot of technology that is out there now that helps to automate vineyard practices,” Douglas says. “But to get the best use of that technology, you need perfectly straight vine rows and even spacing.”
Trimming and pruning equipment, as well as mechanical harvesters, work best when rows are evenly spaced and straight. “If the occasional vine is off center a machine might graze it and damage the vine,” Douglas notes. “And harvesters can really chew up wooden posts if they are out of line.”
Douglas gets to avoid those difficulties as he directs the planting at these newest SFE vineyards, on the former Stewart Brothers Nursery property on the southeast Kelowna bench. The first vines went in there in 2017 and all told there will be 160 acres of an assortment of varietals suited to the site including Pinot Gris, Gewurztraminer, Riesling, Pinot Noir and Gamy.
“Satellite mapping technology helps us lay out the vineyard blocks in the most efficient way and the accuracy of the GPS planter makes sure we get the optimum spacing in our plantings,” Douglas says.
“You set up a vineyard for 30 to 40 years and you want it looking good,” adds Douglas. With all the attention the winery is paying to sustainable farming, including addressing climate, soil, varieties, clones and root stock, this is just one more piece in trying to balance the vine, he says.
“If everything is evenly spaced, the vines will get the same light penetration and you should be able to prune it the same, fertigate it the same and get the same results.”