Yellow on its way in the vineyards

The small,yellow flowers will colour our vineyards in Loisy-en-Brie and elsewhere next spring.

Melilotus officinalis. Please meet our new employee in the vineyards. This little helper will facilitate our duties in the plots and at the same time fortify the vines for the benefit of the grapes and finally for the champagnes as well.

A plant also known as yellow sweet clover. This member of the legume-species appreciates chalky soils with clay like ours, and it tolerates cold weather as well as draught. We’ve got it all in Champagne, and so in early October we have sown big amounts of seeds in our plots. This newcomer is very welcome.

 Vegetable helpers in the plots

We have sown this October. As these future little plants are scared neither by the cold weather of winter nor by the possible draught of summer. The seeds will grow until next spring. As they develop, the roots will work the soil to become less compact, more alive. Furthermore, the melilots will cover up the soils in green as the small plants develop. Or rather yellow which is the color of the flowers, that are very appreciated by the bees.

After blooming we will cut the tops and roll them down with our new tools for them to work as a green fertilizer in the vineyard. Hopefully they will also prevent other plants from spreading in the plots. The vines will benefit from less competition for access to water and minerals. And the grapes will surely gain from this change in quality, maybe even quantity-wise as well.  

Later in the spring, we will be ready for a next batch of sowing different plants. To be continued… as we learn more ourselves.

Permaculture, Agriculture de conservation, Agronomie ecologique

These methods are known in other areas of agriculture but is completely new in the viticulture of Champagne. At the moment, it pops up in articles here and there under headlines like ”Plants revolutionize the vineyards” and similar. So far, this looks like the absolute avant-garde of revolution, never big in numbers.

In our local area we are three to have invested in the necessary equipment. We would like to exchange experiences with the two others but such experience does not yet exist. We expect to be in the very first ones to work like this.

In Champagne, winegrowers can use herbicides until 2021. We have followed how more growers than before work their soils mechanically. They remove weeds by ploughing between the vines with tractors or horses. But many still uses herbicides and don’t yet know how they will proceed after 2021.

Permaculture as described above is a new possibility in the vineyards.

What do we get out of it: more life

Why this idea to leave the vineyards covered all year round? What do we gain from it?

The objective is that the vines get help rather than competition from the plants that grow next to them, help to fight diseases off as well as access to the needed water and minerals.

Another important advantage is that a soil covered with adequate plants keeps the moisture better than a naked or ploughed up one. This is a more and more important factor as we have seen two consecutive summers with virtually no rain in Champagne.

The ultimate outcome of all this will hopefully be better grapes that we will work into even richer champagnes for the benefit of us all. So let’s get to work… for such a noble goal.

The plants are sown between the vines with the help of this machine for at start.