When Every Plant Has an Address: How Winemaker Kristof Anderson Gardens

Welcome to our garden…

In most vineyards, Kristof explains, every block has a name and every row has a letter or number, but he has set things up so that, in addition, every vine also has a number. This allows him to specify a particular vine the way USPS finds our house with mail: each plant has its own address. “For example,” he says, “I can send my vineyard crew to look at K block, row D, vine 62.” And this allows him to micro-farm, to farm vine-by- vine, even to make & direct picking decisions vine-by-vine, as sun & shade affect ripeness at the vine level.

Naturally, this data lends itself to spread-sheeting. I am fairly sure my husband dreams in spreadsheets. I have seen Kristof drag data across multiple spreadsheets on three different screens in his office, using proprietary database formulas he’s created over the years. All winemakers use spreadsheets to track data, but I am fairly sure this level of analytic detail—addressing each plant—is uncommon, even in the world of viticulturists & winemakers; at least I’ve never heard of anyone picking or farming with such precision.

This March, as we planned our largest backyard garden ever, Kristof built a spreadsheet for our home garden. “This is how I farm,” my husband told me, “this is how I think.” “By spreadsheet?” I asked. But I began to see a grace & beauty in this level of organization because of the way it frees him to work carefully & responsibly amid the myriad unknowns of uncontrollable nature. My mind does not work this way, but today, as I hold up the print-out, compare it to the actual garden, glowing & alive in the sun, something clicks. So, I thought it would be fun to share…for gardeners, for wine enthusiasts, for anyone who loves a good spreadsheet.

The first tab (Map-Grid) is a graphical representation of our garden as it has been planted so far. The second tab (Listing) uses a formula to reference the first spreadsheet. This allows us to sort by plant type (say tomato), look at the row ID, & quickly find where the sungold tomato grows in the garden. Hovering over the red triangle in a cell gives further detail about each plant, via a Microsoft Excel Note. Our complete home garden spreadsheet version took up too much memory to share because of graphics, but Kristof has added hyperlinks to web addresses with more info on plants instead. We share this in a spirit of fun & hope you will have fun playing with the embedded spreadsheet! Happy Gardening!

Or, to link to the spreadsheet, please click our virtual garden.

—Cheers!

Kristof & Jennifer