Updates, news and behind the scenes of VineyardElf
The classic forecast gives one number for tomorrow night. Google DeepMind's WeatherNext generates dozens of scenarios and turns frost and spray decisions into probabilities. What that changes for a small vineyard.
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A summary of an Inside Winemaking episode with Elias Fernandez (Shafer Vineyards, Napa) plus commentary: why an AI water-management tool (Tule) barely fits a wet 0.22-hectare vineyard in Poland, while the measure-first-decide-later principle transfers directly.
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A summary of an AWRI podcast on vineyard automation (David Allen, Pernod Ricard NZ) with commentary: why the Oxin autonomous tractor won't scale down to a 0.22-hectare vineyard, but the principle behind it will.
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From 2027 the EU requires plant protection product records to be electronic and machine-readable, with no area threshold. What changes, who it covers, what a record must contain, and where national rules differ.
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For three weeks in July our irrigation watered the lawn almost every night - even when 18 mm of rain fell. The weather station said it was dry. How a clogged rain gauge and free Open-Meteo taught us not to trust a single sensor.
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The BBCH scale is an international system of plant growth stages. Knowing your vines' stage lets you make better decisions about protection, irrigation and harvest.
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We're building our own sensor to monitor the microclimate right at the vine leaf - where fungal disease risk is actually decided. AHT15, LoRa, cloud integration.
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VineyardElf started as a box of electronics screwed to a post in our vineyard - an OpenSprinkler controller and a frost-protection script. Here's how tinkering at Winnica Pustkowie grew into a platform.
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