In bloom and on edge
Jose Soles of Santa Rosa prunes vines, owned by John Louvau of Healdsburg, on Tuesday off of Laughlin Road in Fulton. The warm temperatures of the last few weeks has accelerated the swelling of grape vines pointing toward a earlier than normal bud break.
Kent Porter / PDPublished: Tuesday, February 3, 2009 at 3:00 a.m.
Last Modified: Tuesday, February 3, 2009 at 10:53 p.m.
It seemed like the perfect spring day for a bike ride recently when Williams Selyem winemaker Bob Cabral was out cruising the back roads of Healdsburg with his 7-year-old daughter.
The temperature was a balmy 70 degrees, trees were bursting into bud and young Paige Cabral exclaimed, “Daddy, isn’t it beautiful?”
The problem? It wasn’t spring. It was late January, too early for Nature to awaken and begin rocking out.
Cabral, who also is managing partner for the high-end Russian River Valley winery, said he found himself tempering his daughter’s enthusiasm. “It’s still winter. To be honest, we shouldn’t be able to ride bikes. It should be wet. This is not good.”
February frequently delivers a spring tease, days so disorienting you forget what season it is. But this year, the “early spring” is not just perception. Horticulturists say some plants and trees are starting to bud, two weeks to a month earlier than usual.
“Spring is coming earlier and it has been doing that the last three or four years. But this year is astonishing,” said Bob Hornback, a longtime garden educator and advisor to Luther Burbank’s Gold Ridge Farm in Sebastopol. Hornback said almond trees are typically early. Be he was “amazed” to see how many were in full bloom in St. Helena this week.
The sight of magnolias in blossom may seem like a blessing in a winter when some parts of the country experience lung-searing cold. But the prospect of early budding, particularly on North Coast grapevines, has some grapegrowers and vintners like Cabral on edge.
The prospect of frost damage would only be insult to injury in a year of serious drought.
“With two more months of potential cold weather you just never know what will happen,” said Nick Frey, president of the Sonoma County Winegrape Commission.
Frey said he saw buds just starting to swell in a vineyard in the Russian River Valley on Tuesday. “It wasn’t imminent bud break but I would say the prospect of bud break in some vineyards in February is high,” he predicted.
Jim Caudill, spokesman for Sonoma-Cutrer Vineyards, said vineyard workers and managers are talking about it, “worried these warm days will accelerate things.”
“I’m almost certain given the weather conditions we’ll have an early bud break,” he said.
Carol Wheeler, who oversees the historic grounds of the Luther Burbank home in Santa Rosa, said she saw signs of budding on many roses two weeks ago. And now most are pushing out. The first signs, she said, usually wouldn’t come until February. An old plum tree has been open at least a week, she added.
“It’s a scary thing. It’s always nice to see nice weather. It’s so wonderful being outside,” she said. “But if we do get the cold and the rain we need, it’s hard to know what’s going to happen with all that.”
Two weather fronts are expected to bring up to a half-inch of rain to the North Bay in the next couple of days, evening out the temperature extremes — making the days slightly cooler and the nights slightly warmer. Bryan Caffrey of the National Weather Service in Eureka said lows might be in the upper 30s to the low 40s and highs around 60.
Typically the danger of frost doesn’t diminish until after mid-April. Last year, a late frost on April 20 and 21 hit some vineyards hard. And with water tables low and reservoirs depleted, growers who depend on spraying to combat frost damage may be biting their nails for two more months.
Jan Tolmasoff, owner of Russian River Rose Company in Healdsburg, said roses may lose some growth but the plants will recover. There have been enough really cold days and frost in the season to allow the plants to go into the dormancy that makes them happy, she said. She advised people to prune roses as quickly as possible, however.
But Sonoma County Farm Adviser Paul Vossen said it is still unknown if the temperatures have have been cold enough to give some fruit trees the chill they need to produce much fruit.
Erik Hagiwara-Nagata, who owns Garden Delights Nursery in Penngrove and specializes in fruit trees, estimated that spring is a month ahead. Star magnolias and saucer magnolias with their big pink tuliplike blooms are in full show. Some daffodils are poking up early and he said his buckeyes are already starting to grow, forcing him to put them in a greenhouse.
But he said he seeks peace with the vagaries of each season. Last year’s late frost burned his wisteria, killed an apple tree and fried the tops of his friends’ Japanese maples.
Wheeler at the Burbank Gardens said she’s also “trying to go with it and not fret too much.”
“But it is,” she said, “pretty interesting.”
Staff Writer Meg McConahey can be contacted at 521-5204 and meg.mcconahey@
pressdemocrat.com.
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