How to start your own vineyard: Soil preparation

Our Traminette vines about a week ago. 

We were very busy in the fall of 2002 getting our new vineyard ready to receive the vines in the spring of 2003.  We had recently plowed the area we were going to plant and then dug the trenches for the vines.  Now, according to our faithful, From Vines to Wines: The Complete Guide to Growing Grapes and Making Your Own Wine, it was time to get the soil ready.  The book had a lot of good information about soil preparation and the effect it has on the growth of vines, but we had no idea where to have the soil analyzed.

Once again, I turned to our Wine Grape Agent at the Penn State University Cooperative Extension.   He recommended   A & L Analytical Labs in Memphis. They could analyze the soil but we should then turn over the lab report to someone who could interpret the results and recommend how to amend the soil for optimal vine health.  For this we turned to Dr. Tony Wolf, a professor of Viticulture at Virginia Tech. 

Our initial soil ph was 5.2, pretty acidic.  Under the assumption that we were planting vinifera cultivars, Dr. Wolf recommended that we raise the ph to about 6.5 by applying lime at a rate of 3 tons per acre.  Since our little plot was less than an acre, we reduced accordingly.  He also recommended adding some potassium and magnesium. So adding lime, no problem, but where do you get potassium and magnesium?  I never saw big bags of it at Home Depot.  We were too embarrassed to ask Dr. Wolf such an elemental question, so we searched online.  You have to go to your local farming supply place and get potash and epsom salts.

We made all the amendments in the spring of 2003.  Amazingly, when we did another soil analysis in the summer of 2003, our soil ph was 7!  It really worked!