Green strongest, red weakest
The colours grade the vines on a curve within each block. Red does not mean dead. It means look here first.
Relative vigor (NDVI) · vineyard block · Demonstration capture
Find the weak blockbefore harvest does.
One flight over your vineyard or orchard, and the whole block comes back ranked: strong rows, soft rows, the corner that's slipping. You walk straight to the rows that need you instead of eyeballing the whole block and hoping. A map for you and your agronomist to read, captured and processed here in the South Okanagan.
The flagship · Relative-vigor mapping
See the weak rows from your desk.
This is the work most growers come for. The Mavic 3 Multispectral reads the near-infrared and red-edge light your vines actually give off (not a colour trick on an ordinary photo) and turns the block into a ranked picture of strong, medium, and weak zones. Drag the handle below: this is our own capture of a Summerland vineyard block, processed in-house and shown exactly as you'd receive it.
- Demonstration capture
- Multispectral · 5 indices
- RTK FIX
- Summerland BC
Slide between the true-colour orthomosaic and the vigor map of the same rows, cut to the same georeferenced extent. Switch indices to see the canopy a few different ways. The map flags the spot; you and your agronomist confirm the cause on the ground.
Open a real job
Step inside a full delivery, right here.
The slider above is a taste. This is the whole thing: the live web viewer we hand over at the end of a vigor job, running in your browser. Our own demonstration capture: a Summerland vineyard, three blocks, seven layers per block. Pick a block, switch between the true-colour photo and the vigor maps, fade one over the other, and zoom right into the rows. Nothing heavy loads until you ask for it.
This is the same viewer a client receives alongside their report, published here exactly as delivered.
0.3 cmDelivered detail (Blair capture)
5Vigor indices, one flight
RTK FIXPositioning workflow
In-houseFrom capture to delivery
The 60-second guide
How to read the maps in 60 seconds.
Every vigor map we deliver uses the same colour language, fitted to each block so the real variation shows. Learn it once and it reads the same everywhere: the slider above, the live viewer, and every page of the report.
Grey is not vine
Roads, bare ground, and gaps between plants stay neutral grey, so only canopy carries a colour.
Read colours within one map
Each map is coloured on its own range so its pattern shows clearly. Compare blocks with the numbers in the tables, not by matching colours across maps.
Ask for a second opinion
Five indices read the same canopy differently. A zone that comes up soft on several is a stronger flag than one that shows on just one.
Want the deeper explainer? Read how vineyard vigor mapping works.
Two families of maps
Canopy amount is not canopy health.
The five indices fall into two families, and the useful reads come from holding them side by side. One family measures how much canopy a vine is carrying. The other measures how well fed that canopy is. Together they catch the vine neither family can catch alone: big but pale, a full canopy quietly running out of steam.
HOW MUCH
Canopy amount · NDVI & OSAVI
The size and density of the leaf canopy: how much green growth each vine is carrying. NDVI is the workhorse overview, with OSAVI damping the bare soil that shows between rows. Its one limit: in a dense mid-summer canopy NDVI flattens to uniform green, and differences can hide underneath.
HOW HEALTHY
Canopy health · NDRE, GNDVI & LCI
Chlorophyll: how well fed and active the leaves are. Red-edge light reaches deeper into the canopy than red, so NDRE keeps separating vines after plain greenness has flattened out. It is the earlier read on a canopy that looks full but is starting to fade.
In grower terms: the first family tells you how big the engine is, the second how well it is firing. A small vine reading healthy and a big vine reading pale are two different conversations, and only the two families together can tell them apart.
What lands in your inbox
A report the owner reads at a glance.
Every flight ends in a plain-language PDF, not a folder of raw data you have to be a GIS person to open. The owner reads the block at a glance; the index rasters sit underneath as GeoTIFFs for the agronomist's own software. You get the block in true colour, the vigor indices, area-by-class tables, and observations written for grower and agronomist review. The pages below are the seven-page report from our own Blair Street vineyard capture, page for page. Click any page to read it, or download the same report and read it whole.
Counts, gaps & everything else from one flight
Replant as a number, not a guess.
The other thing growers ask for: count what's there and map what's missing. Every vine or tree gets counted and every gap in the row gets located, so your replant order is a number you hand the nursery, not a windshield estimate. That count and gap map is the most unambiguous thing a drone gives you; the vigor maps tell you where to look, the counts tell you exactly how many. One flight feeds all of it. Pick what you and your agronomist need and we produce it, georeferenced in NAD83(CSRS), in a plain shared folder that opens straight in your own GIS. Fly it once, or run it across the season on the schedule you set.
Vigor & index maps
- NDVI
- NDRE
- GNDVI
- OSAVI
- LCI
- Observed-vigor zone maps
- Class-area tables
Counts, gaps & change
- Vine & tree counts
- Gap & skip detection
- Stand-count maps
- Irrigation-zone delineation
- Season-over-season change
- Replant decision support
- Nursery & container-yard counts
Block geometry, from the 3D model
- Sun-exposure (aspect) map
- Canopy height map
- Environmental Farm Plan baseline imagery
Files you receive
- Plain-language PDF report
- Orthomosaic · GeoTIFF
- Index layers · GeoTIFF
- Vigor zones · SHP / GeoPackage / KML
- Class-area tables · CSV
- Google Earth · KMZ
- Offline field map · GeoPDF / Avenza
- Interactive web map link
Every layer arrives georeferenced in NAD83(CSRS), ready for your own GIS.
What each map & file is
Vegetation-index maps (NDVI · NDRE · GNDVI · OSAVI · LCI): five reads of the same canopy. NDVI for overall vigor, NDRE and LCI deeper into chlorophyll, GNDVI on greenness, and OSAVI corrected for the bare soil between the rows. They're delivered as georeferenced GeoTIFF layers for your own GIS.
Observed-vigor zone maps: vigor drawn into editable map layers (SHP · GeoPackage · KML) you open beside your scouting notes.
Vine & tree counts: an accurate per-block count mapped to where each vine or tree stands, with emergence and stand counts on younger plantings. It's the starting point for inventory, per-vine record-keeping, and the replant decision: paired with the block-by-block vigor maps, these are the numbers a replant call actually turns on.
Gap & skip maps: missing vines, dead trees, and skips in the planting pattern, flagged by location across the whole block, so a walk-through or replant plan goes straight to each one.
Irrigation-zone delineation: vigor patterns drawn into zones you can manage as units, so water and inputs follow the canopy rather than the calendar.
Season-over-season change: this season's flight set against last season's, block to block. It's the map that turns one capture into a record.
Nursery & container-yard counts: stock counting flown with our onboard real-time count, plus multispectral vigor across outdoor nurseries and production blocks.
Sun-exposure (aspect) map: which way each slope and row faces, drawn from the 3D surface. It's a reference for canopy positioning and row orientation, and a useful starting point for solar and site planning too.
Canopy height map: vine or tree height across the block, the model's surface measured against bare ground. It gives you a planning-grade height reference: how tall, not just how green.
Environmental Farm Plan imagery: georeferenced orthomosaic and before/after baseline imagery that supports your Environmental Farm Plan and beneficial-management-practice documentation. It's imagery for your records and applications, never an assessment we author.
Files & formats: the plain-language PDF report, the true-colour orthomosaic and all index layers as GeoTIFF, vigor zones as SHP / GeoPackage / KML, class-area tables as CSV, a KMZ overlay for Google Earth, an Avenza-ready GeoPDF you carry into the block offline, and a zoomable interactive web map you can share with your team.
Who this is for · how it compares
Walk fewer rows, whatever you grow.
From the ground you see the rows in front of you. From the air, with the light measured on every flight, you see the whole block at once: every panel, every gap, every zone where vigor falls off, in enough detail to get to the exact vine that needs you. It's built for the people who make growing decisions.
VINEYARDS
Wineries & growers
A whole-block read on canopy vigor before veraison, so water, canopy work, and labour go where the season actually needs them. You also get a baseline to compare against next year.
ORCHARDS
Apple, cherry, peach & apricot
Tree-by-tree vigor across the block, gap and miss detection, and tree counts. It's the same workflow that maps a vineyard, tuned to orchard canopy.
CONSULTANTS
Viticulture & agronomy consultants
A georeferenced map set you can open beside your own scouting notes. Observed vigor variability is laid out by zone, ready to inform the calls you already make.
TURF
Golf course turf
The same multispectral read for fairways and greens, and more. Golf courses have their own home now: drone services for golf courses.
Boots, satellite, or a drone?
You already walk the rows, and you can pull a satellite pass for free. Here's the honest case for a drone flight, laid next to both, showing where each earns its keep and where it falls short.
| Kendal Ventures drone | Walking the rows | Satellite | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Resolution | Vine-level detail, roughly 1.7 cm/px on the finished maps, single vines legible | Vine-by-vine where you stand, but blind to the rest of the block at once | Coarse. Many vines per pixel, so fine pattern washes out |
| Frequency & cost | Flown on your schedule, on a clear-sky window you choose | Free, but limited by how much ground one person can cover | On a fixed orbit schedule; clouds can cost you the date you need |
| Whole-block view | The entire block in one georeferenced image set | Built up row by row from memory and notes | Whole-block, but too coarse to act vine to vine |
| Turnaround | Flown locally, processed in-house, no outside queue | Immediate, but only for the ground you covered | Depends on the provider's processing and revisit cycle |
| Five indices | NDVI · NDRE · GNDVI · OSAVI · LCI from one flight | What the eye can see | Often one or two broad indices |
A drone map doesn't replace walking the rows. It tells you which rows to walk.
What to fly, when
A capture for every turn in the season.
The canopy tells a different story at each stage. Here's what a flight shows at the five points in the season where it pays for itself.
Bud break
An early-season flight while the canopy is still opening. It's the first read on how evenly the block is waking up across its panels.
What the flight shows: emergence and early uniformity across the block, panel to panel
Canopy fill
A flight as the canopy closes in. This is the point where vigor differences become legible from the air and zones start to separate.
What the flight shows: in-block vigor zones and canopy density as the rows fill
Veraison
A mid-to-late-season flight at colour change, when the spread between strong and stressed zones gives its clearest read of the year.
What the flight shows: the season's clearest map of relative vigor, zone by zone
Pre-harvest
A late flight before the fruit comes off. It's a final whole-block picture to set against your scouting as you plan the pick.
What the flight shows: the block's late-season vigor pattern, mapped against your notes
Post-harvest
A closing flight after the pick. It captures how the season ended, a baseline for next year to measure against.
What the flight shows: the season-end baseline for year-over-year comparison
Flying the same block across the season
Did it work,or is the blockdeclining?
That's the question one map can't answer and a season can. Fly the same block a few times (early canopy, veraison, pre-harvest) and you can finally ask it straight: did the weak corner respond to the irrigation change, or is this zone dropping off year over year and headed for replant? The aircraft carries an onboard sunlight sensor that reads the light the whole time it flies and corrects the indices against it, so passing cloud and shifting sun don't skew a single read.
Want this season to compare to last? On a repeat or season-over-season program we shoot a reflectance panel on every flight: a fixed, known reference the data is anchored to. It's what keeps the maps comparable date to date and block to block, so when you put two seasons side by side you can actually mean it, instead of comparing yesterday's light to today's. A real before-and-after, not two pretty pictures shot under different clouds.
We publish accuracy figures only once they're measured on a validated dataset, not before.
Pictured behind: one Summerland vineyard block from a single capture, the rows in true colour beside their relative-vigor read.
Straight talk
What this can and cannot tell you.
You should know exactly where the line sits before you book a flight. Here it is, once, in plain terms.
RELIABLE
What it does well
Ranks relative vigor across the whole block, row by row, and puts a precise location on the thin, soft, or slipping zones.
Flags growth patterns worth checking on the ground, including runs and bands where the canopy is not filling evenly.
Counts vines and trees and maps every gap: hard numbers, not estimates.
Flown as a repeat program with the reflectance panel, it builds a season record you can compare date to date.
NOT THIS
What it cannot do
It never names the cause. Water, nutrients, disease, soil: telling those apart is ground work for you and your agronomist.
It does not measure soil moisture or vine water status directly. It reads the canopy's response, so on its own it cannot tell over-watering from under-watering.
A single flight is a relative snapshot. The ranking within that flight is solid; comparing one date to another takes the calibrated repeat program.
It is never a diagnosis and never a treatment prescription.
That line is the whole design: relative-vigor maps prepared for grower and agronomist review. The map tells you where to look. What it means, and what to do about it, stays your call and your agronomist's.
On the horizon · Founding registration open
Drone application is coming. Get your blocks on the list first.
Two programs, built around the growers who register first. Spray covers fungicide and foliar feeding for South Okanagan vineyards and orchards, launching for the 2027 season. Seeding & spreading handles granular fertilizer, cover crop, and grass seed, the next aircraft we're adding. It's one list and one sign-up. Register now and your blocks are first to know the moment each goes live.
- Founding registration
- Spray · 2027 season
- Seeding & spreading
- No commitment
Spray and spreading launch for the 2027 season. Founding registration is free and commits you to nothing.
- Onboard sunlight-sensor correction on every flight
- Transport Canada-certified RPAS pilot
- Captured & processed in-house
- Summerland, BC
Questions & answers
Crop health mapping, answered.
How fast do I get the maps back?
Flights are flown locally and processed in-house, so your data never sits in someone else's queue. We set a turnaround at the scope call based on the size of the block and what you need. You'll have a date in writing before we fly.
What do the five indices actually mean for me?
Each index reads the canopy a little differently. NDVI gives an overall vigor picture, NDRE and LCI read deeper into chlorophyll, GNDVI leans on greenness, and OSAVI corrects for bare soil between the rows. We lay them out side by side and write plain-language observations of where vigor varies, for you and your agronomist to interpret against what you know about the block. The two sections above (the 60-second guide and canopy amount vs canopy health) cover how to read them.
More from the air program
We don't only fly vineyards.
The same RTK capture and in-house pipeline, pointed at another kind of property.
Request a quote
Get your blocks on the map this season.
Every project starts with a short scoping conversation. We'll talk through which blocks, when in the season, and exactly what you'll receive.
Every inquiry gets a reply within one business day.