This is timely. This morning I took a long drive through the desert and found myself in the middle of the Coachella Valley Red Flame Commercial Grape acres. I noticed a ton of workers with umbrellas, so i stopped. Harvest time! Workers in the 108 degree heat, harvesting the Red Flame Grapes. They do cane prune. These vines are very fat and old. They keep them short too. Nothing over 5' tall. There are miles of grapes here. This is the optimum zone 9b for Thompson Seedless and Red Flame. The commercial growers sell to Costco, so I imagine Costcos everywhere will be receiving shipments soon! I am the only wine grape grower here in this land of perpetual sun, I think. Everyone probably knows something I don't, but I had to research hard and find vitis vinifera that craves heat and wind. I found the vines. Had to go to Greece, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Australia for them, and I have the strangest assortment of wine grapes ever!! I'm looking forward to see how they blend at wine making time. None of my varieties can take a freeze, so it would be senseless for me to list them for you. It's just important to find varieties that will thrive in your particular climate. Good luck to you! Suzi

Sorry to hear about your blueberry issues. I have not heard of phomopsis on blueberries. They are usually quite disease resistant. I'm no expert in this disease, but if it was me, and take my advice for what it is, I'd prune all affected branches, even if it means cutting all to the ground. Blueberries will regrow, and cutting to the ground is often recommended for old overgrown blueberries. Downside of course is that harvest will be delayed for a couple of years when it has to regrow from scratch. Once you get rid of all the diseased branches, spray sulphur fungicide prior to rain to avoid reinfection. It may take awhile to recover from this. I'm glad it's not me. In my experience, it's usually not worth trying to save diseased branches of most plants. If there are experts around familiar with this fungi on blueberries, I'd like to hear from them. There may not be many.

I grow a few varieties of grapes but not sure I would call myself an expert. From your pictures, it looks like you have one or more fungal infections on your grapes. The treatment is essentially the same if it is black rot, downy mildew, phomopsis cane, etc. At the end of the season, you'll need to prune off the infected canes, clean up around the vines, and make sure that there are no infected grapes laying around. Start the vine on a spray program next year and it should clear up. My vines looked worse last year but this year I followed the spray program and they are nearly perfect. The season isn't over but I may have more grapes than I know what to do with. Although our regions are a bit different, here is the guide I used to manage the spray routine. Midwest IPM Guide

My Perlette grape is suffering from what appears to be powdery mildew this year. I've never seen it before on grape vines in my yard before, but I think it may be because we had a lot of cloudy overcast weather in CA and a very dry winter. The powdery mildew is on the canes, leaves, and berries. I've sprayed with Bonide copper funigicide after noticing the mildew, it doesn't seem to have made much of a difference. A couple of the canes I planned on using for next years fruiting canes are looking bad, they keep on getting yellower. Are they usable still, if not shall I cut them off now so the disease doesn't spread to the outlying canes?? Are there any mildew resistant table grapes that can be grown in CA?