Welcome to Our Spring 2007 CZ Intern

This spring we have invited Sweet Briar College senior Kelsey Jeffers to complete the intership requirement for her degree in environmental science at Chateau Z Vineyard. You can view her blog on what she is up to by going to the "wine newbie extraordinaire" team member page from this blog. Kelsey will be helping with vineyard soil analysis, vine mapping using GIS, typical vineyard chores like pruning and shoot thinning, and working on developing some new, non-chemical approaches to controlling our biggest pests: the European hornet, Japanese beetle, and grapevine root borer. These methods will include trapping hornet queens in the "Blankenship Trap", growing our own Bacillus popillaea (milky spore), and growing our own cruiser nematodes (Heterorhabditis bacteriophora - see http://extension.osu.edu/~news/story.php?id=2058). Kelsey will be reporting on her activites throughout the spring on her personal blog.