Irrigation during drought

I keep wondering if this site is going to continue with all of its spam content now,but hope this still works. I have a small vineyard (30 vines) in Herefordshire (SW England) situated on a south facing 15 degrees slope on limestone based soil.The site is dry at the best of times,but this year it is exceptionally dry,after having no rainfall in this area at all since March.I have already lost three apple trees,and several others are under so much stress that I am watering them in succession 24hrs a day. The vines are just about at veraison time,and about three weeks earlier than usual.The foliage looks healthy and dark green,with not much growth now from the sideshoots. During the last week I have been applying the water hosepipe to the base of each vine for a few minutes(any more water just runs down the slope)and the grapes seemed to have swelled a little. Should I be watering vines as I know they are deep rooting-but so are large apple trees which seemed to have benefitted from the applied water.I have read somewhere that if one irrigates at all in drought periods,apply the water before veraison.So do I continue or leave the grapes now to go through the ripening period? MIchael

Reply to
michael
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*What* spam?

Oh. You're using Google Groups to access the newsgroup. That explains it.

Get yourself a (free) account at eternal-september.org, and a real newsreader (Thunderbird is a good one), and stop using Google's badly broken portal. For more than a year now, the only time I've seen any spam in this group is when someone else quotes or replies to one of the spam posts.

Sorry I can't help you with your viticulture question. But at least I can help to make reading the newsgroup a better experience for you. Contact me off-group (doug at milmac dot com) if you have questions about how to read newsgroups without using Google to do it.

Reply to
Doug Miller

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