With the way technology and farming are coming together today, it’s no shock that we’re seeing new tools that make grape picking better than ever before.
Long ago, grape picking was only about hard work by hand, using the knowledge passed down from older generations. Now, those who grow, make, and work with grapes are using cool gadgets and smart systems. Thanks to technology, they can look after their crops in a smart way, make things more efficient, and make even better wine by keeping an eye on things like when the grapes are ripe enough.
Modern agricultural monitoring software that people can use on different devices is helping them know exactly when to pick their grapes. It tells them about the soil, how wet it is, and how the weather will be. This is leading to a new way of picking grapes that is smarter, better for the earth, and very careful about every little detail.
Grapes: An Overview
Grapes may be small, but they’ve been a big part of how humans farm for thousands of years. Grown in large fields called vineyards, grapes are eaten by themselves or used to make many things like wine, jelly, juice, raisins, and vinegar. Wine is the most famous product made from grapes, and it’s important for the economies of places that make a lot of it.
Plus, grapes are packed with good stuff for your body, like antioxidants and things called polyphenols, which have a lot of health perks. Taking all of this into account – their money value, their nutrients, and how important wine and vineyards are to culture – it’s clear that grapes are super valuable.
Grape Harvesting: Timing and Methods
Picking grapes is a special thing that mixes knowing how things grow, being creative, and watching carefully. Choosing the right time to pick them is really important because it can affect how they taste, especially for wine.
Figuring out the perfect time to pick grapes isn’t simple. You have to test things like how sweet the grapes are, how sour they taste, and sometimes just eat a few to see if they’re just right. The type of grape, what you’ll make with it, and the weather that year also play a part.
How you pick grapes depends on how many you have and what kind of wine you want to make. Small wineries that care a lot about quality still pick grapes by hand. This is slow and takes a lot of people, but it’s the best way to make sure the grapes are perfect when they get to where they’ll be turned into wine.
Big vineyards or those making certain wines use huge machines to shake the grapes off the vines and catch them in bins. It’s faster and doesn’t need as many people.
The Best Time to Harvest Grapes
The time when grapes are ready to be picked is very busy. You need to be right on time with packing and sending them off because you don’t want too many grapes to arrive at the market at once. Getting your grapes onto the store shelves quickly is one way to beat the competition.
For example, a company in Egypt wanted their grapes in the market before anyone else’s. That meant they had to start picking as soon as possible.
After the grapes are all picked, usually by the middle of August, the vines go to sleep for the winter. They need to get cold enough during this sleepy time to be ready to make grapes again the next year. Once the vines have been cold enough for long enough, they can start growing tasty grapes again.
To make the vines wake up earlier, you can use a special spray. This means earlier grapes! But first, the company needs to know exactly how many cold hours the vines need, and the earliest time they can use the spray.
That’s where tools like satellite crop monitoring come in. The Egyptian company used a service called EOSDA Crop Monitoring to watch the weather, especially to see how hot or cold it was every hour. They needed this info to count how many cold hours their grape fields had.
With this satellite-based tool, they could check the temperature of their grape fields every day to figure out how many cold hours they had. Thanks to this, they knew the best time to spray the vines, so their grapes would be top-notch. They could also plan better for when to pick the grapes and how many they’d have at different times.
By using this tech, the company started picking their grapes as much as 10 days ahead of others. Being first in the market really helped them look good to customers, and they made 10-15% more money because they sold their grapes early when prices were still high.
In the end, high-tech tools and online software are changing the way grapes are picked. These tools can find out when the best time is to harvest, and do a lot of work that used to be done by hand. Everyone from small growers to big farms is seeing how these new methods not only save time and money but also make sure we get great grapes. As we keep going, this mix of old ways and new tools is making grape picking a whole lot smarter.
