It’s not growing very well this year. Suddenly there are tall branches... then in another spot low cabbage-like growth. Things will be hellish for the next two weeks... Look at this here, I can’t do anything with this. But here, there’s still some good growth... one, two, three,four, five, six,... seven, eight... So here we are in Ladoix... we’ve been working this vineyard organically since 2010... without any of glyphosate or systemic product crap... This year... I trained for two years with a guy named Eric Petiot... to learn how to treat the vines with plants... This year we're using half a hectare... to prepare plant blends, and fermented extracts... and decoctions. I monitor the vines, their growth... if there’s disease or not... and depending on what I find, I treat regularly with various preparations. Instead of using sulfur and copper treatments. Even if organic, copper and sulfur are not ideal... copper is a heavy metal that stays in the soil... Even if the soil here is rich in clay so the copper forms clumps... so it’s not as dangerous as with the sandy soils in other regions. but if you can do without it... We know now, according to the "Organic Charter", in a few years... we will be using much less copper... or even no copper at all in the future. So to replace it, we use plant based treatments, depending on the weather... You can’t use nettle, for example, when it is hot and humid. because if there is a little disease, it makes it even worse... So depending on the weather, I either mix horsetail (E. arvense) with fern... or alternately nettle with laminaria... For powdery mildew, I also use organic whey... A friend, who harvests with us,. named Miguel, has goats and makes organic cheese... and he brings me his organic whey every week or so. For the moment, it seems this year there’s powdery mildew... So because of that... I'll do "preventive treatments" of course. To stop powdery mildew from developing. And for "curative treatments", if necessary, I'll use garlic. because there's more sulfur in garlic... than the chemical sulfur usually used on vines. So I can use that if really necessary. So for now, I touch wood... It’s looking good. As far as what treatment to do, and when basically... I really decide depending on the weather... and I have to say that Claude at the Domaine is a great help... Come film tomorrow morning to see that it involves a lot of work. The mixture needs stirring... It's hard work. At first I used a hand-held sprayer to treat the vines, when the plants were only so high... but now that it’s like this I don’t see myself using a hand sprayer... It’s possible... but I’ve got other things to do... so Claude comes here with a crawler, so you may want to see that tomorrow, which is a great help. We prepare the mixture together then come here, so I monitor things. So for the treatment schedule, I check with Lolo... who gets information providing the yearly trends: if the year will have tendency... towards being a mildewy year or a powdery one or both. So no honey, because it's in bloom... no meadowsweet... Did you add another two and a half liters?... Nettle is done, confrey's done, laminar's done, fern's done, no copper and no honey because the vineyard's in bloom... meadowsweet that I started last time... Yes it's that one... that's the one. Unlike systemic products... which penetrate and supposedly... will remain active for 10-days, Those guys treat almost every ten days, So it's systematic... it's systematic and they use systemic products! But with an organic vineyard, it's not like that. You monitor things all the time. I'm not saying those who use chemicals don’t monitor. But it's the product sales rep who sets their calendar for them, on one day you do this, ten days later you do something else, while for us, it’s a little more complicated... It doesn't smell like usual! It’s the meadowsweet... So here I’ve put nettle,... nettle, fern... comfrey (Symphytum)... and whey to treat powdery mildew. Nettle helps... There’s more of it than last time. So nettle helps... strengthen the vine's natural defenses, helps photosynthesis... provides nitrogen, it really is a super plant. The fern is an anti fungal, the comfrey helps with flowering, and the whey is to reduce the risk of powdery mildew, it has a salty side to it... And so here, I agitate it for 20 minutes. Shall we go together? It’ll work better this way? Go ahead and move it. Perfect. Perfect at 75! Aren't we incredible? This is a bit like my Bible... for now. Eric Petiot, who gave us the training course, on how to use plants and plant extracts to treat vines, knows a guy named Patrick Goeter, who lives in Brittany, who studied with Eric Petiot for several years... and set up the company: "Purin d’ortie et compagnie” (Nettle slurry and Co.) Here at the Domaine Prieuré Roch, he’s the one who sells us... the nettle, fern and comfrey slurry as well as horsetail decoction, because at this point I don’t have the time... to make it myself, but ideally..., the goal would be... to make them at the Poiset farm. For example for the nettles, we could plant gardens just for the vineyard... at the Poiset farm for example, in order to make our own preparations. So both he and Eric share all their knowledge... on how to manage by oneself. So I look in here, to see what I want to mix for a treatment, for example in the spring: nettle, comfrey, a little honey... some garlic maceration... when you have a problem with powdery mildew... So I look at this and decide: why not use more horsetail today... Or something else, so I send a WhatsApp message to my winegrowers group, to find out what they’re planning to do this week, and based on their plans I follow my gut feeling... to decide what we will do here. We set up a WhatsApp group with... made up of everybody who took the course with Eric Petiot. We get together about every fortnight. We talk about the treatments we've used, the questions we have. It's really great, we're always connected that way. Yesterday, for example, I sent a message: something like, don't use horsetail if it’s going to be above 25 C°, because it may have a tendency to dry out the leaves. So I wrote: this week it’s going above 30, except Thursday and Friday it will stay below 25... so what do you think, can we use horsetail anyway? and several answered: "I wouldn’t, as the weather is generally going above 25°C". Others said: "they'd increase the nettle to strengthen the vines," So it protects itself better from the heat, which isn’t going to be that bad... So then we send all these questions to Eric Petiot... who is our "mentor". and he answers all of our questions... It could be for example: we mix whey with horsetail,... but can we also mix whey with fermented extracts? When can we begin using essential oils? All these questions are reminders of the training sessions we had... and that way,... personally... I find that "reassuring". When you start doing these treatments all by yourself, you can obtain the opposite result of what you want. If you apply nettle, because of a little mildew... when it's warm and humid, the nettle will have the opposite effect, it will increase the mildew... so I don't want to make mistakes, if we do anything we must do it properly. It’s reassuring to have this big group of winegrowers to talk to... who discuss... discuss easily and share their experience so generously... How many people are there? 15, 18, 19... There are about thirty of us... in this... What'sapp group, I hope next year we will be 40, then in ten years it will be everyone...