THE BULLDOZER FINALLY ARRIVES

The bulldozer finally arrives today. It will be a 30 tonne machine which will rip open the soil to about 1,2m hopefully. This will mean in agricultural terms much more soil available for the plant to extract water and nutrients. The deeper the better really. The soils down by the river seems to have lots of clay and is quite deep. A hole we dugged earlier to about 2m still had no restrictions. We expect here lots more growth and also bigger harvest. We therefore have to plant a bigger trellise system. We will be using a 5 wire trellise system with 2,4m poles. If planted the poles will be about 1,8m above soil level.
The rows will run North South meaning you will get sunlight on both sides and less of the big Calitzdorp heat in midday. Meaning less sunburn on the bunches. Also the rows will be longer and less amount of rows. This means less anchor poles and anchors which is the more expensive and important part of putting up a trellise system. Withoek will be going into recycling by using 13 inch tyres as part of our anchors. This giving a use for 25 years for those tyres allready used.
The plants itself will be planted further apart (1,5m) than leaner soils because they will develope bigger root systems because of the better soil type. The rows will be 2,5m wide meaning more rows which leads to more plants which leads to more harvest.
As you gather it is quite an expensive excersice. The total cost according to the good bookkeepers amont us is about R70 000 to R100000 per hectare. As we are planting quite a few this year we pray for an excellent summer and harvest.