Tubex vine shelters make life easier for the vineyard; improving the quality of the vine and reducing costs

Vineyard installation or renewing of root stocks is time consuming and labour intensive activity. Young, freshly planted rootstocks need two or three vegetation periods to develop branches with sufficient amount of clustered flowers – the basis for rich growth of grapes and profitable earnings

As long as the wine yard site is not located on steep slopes, the vine dresser prefers to choose mechanical tending systems to keep the area under cultivation free from weeds. Even, if modern tending systems are available, the risk of damaging root stocks remains. Wounded bark leads to reduced vitality, growth and earnings – and is the typical opening for fungus and viruses.

Under certain conditions, herbicide application is mandatory to prevent massive growth of weeds. Especially younger root stocks with leaves growing only a few decimetres above ground are running the risk to be affected by sprayed herbicides. Taking care about these plants during the spraying operation is time consuming and sound condition could not be guaranteed.

Depending on the region of cultivation, frost in late spring could have a massive negative impact on the productivity of a vineyard. Young shoots and buds could be damaged and will die back. The plant is reacting with forming of new shoots, but the whole plant development is delayed and earnings may be very limited.

TUBEX vine shelters are shortening the phase of plant establishment leading to strong growth – a clear benefit of the micro climate provided within the tube. As a result, first proper harvest is possible one growing season earlier, if compared to non-protected plants. Earning of higher yields continuous during the following seasons leading to significant increment of profitability.

All TUBEX vine shelter products are designed to resist mechanical impacts. Rodents like rabbits and hare have no access to the plant, roe- and red deer has no option to remove bark and cambium layer from the wooden parts of the root stock. Weeding operations to be executed by the vine yard grower could be fulfilled in a time saving matter, as the robust shelters provides proper protection against mowing nylon lines.

The self-closing vine shelter products – the Wraps within the TUBEX portfolio – guarantee the best protection against herbicides and they are available at different diameters and heights. A perfect adoption to root stock size and spraying system is possible. Further, the shelter protects the young plant from the risk to be overgrown by weeds for a certain time span and thus, spraying operations could be reduced or timely placed at the perfect moment in terms of maximum weed control success.

A wide ranging spectrum of wood destroying fungus can attack and finally damage root stocks. Traditionally, root stocks have to be removed completely. However, TUBEX enables a method to regenerate the plant by removing affected parts only and to regrow the root stock by protecting the remaining stump with the ESKAWRAP product. This shelter has an extra-large diameter to enable the development of new shoots. After weaker shoots have been removed by the grower, the remaining one will become the new root stock.