FRUITS. 125 



Loll"" before our earliest ones are ripe, our markets are filled 

 with grapes from the South, and the people have had their 

 till, or at least the time of high prices has passed and ours 

 have to be sold at lower rates. I have been trying to raise 

 grapes for the past twenty years, and have not as yet pro- 

 duced anything very satisfactory. Either my berries or 

 bunches are small, or, if I highly manure the ground, the 

 vines make such rampant growth that the wood ripens poorly, 

 and the grapes seldom become fit for use. 



In starting the vines, I have used single eyes, cuttings, and 

 also layers. I have never had much trouble with cither 

 method, but think that I should prefer layers of one year's 

 growth to cither of the other methods. In my experience I 

 have found that a good strong one-year-old vine is the best to 

 set, surest to grow, and is at just the right age to train in any 

 manner preferred by the cultivator. Some of my vines are 

 twenty years old, and others have been set only a year. I 

 have set out vines, more or less, every year except the four 

 years of the Rebellion, Avhen I was away from home. 



My location is one which I consider to be the best for this 

 climate — a southern slope, with ledges and pine-trees in the 

 rear to break off the cold northern winds and also the dis- 

 agreeable blasts that come from the east. The rays of the 

 September sun striking on the ledges heat them up and thus 

 prolong the warmth far into the night, and consequently the 

 frosts of early autumn are less liable to nip the foliage, and 

 thus retard the ripening. My soil is a gravelly loam mixed 

 with broken fragments of stone, and is in and' of itself rather 

 poor ; so rough and inaccessible that I cannot cultivate much 

 with a team, and as I cannot raise cultivated crops there, I 

 have planted grapes. If anything is done to my vines after 

 well setting out, and an occasional top-dressing of tan-ashes, 

 it is a light hoeing and top-covering or mulch of old meadow 

 hay, weeds or wood- wax. 



As it is customary to cut and prune the vine, I used to fol- 

 low in the beaten track marked out by theorists. Of late 

 years I have not used the knife so freely, and am well assured 

 that I have been more successfnl as to good, well-ripened 

 wood, and also in fruit. My vines are trained in various 

 methods ; some are on cedcr-pole trellises, others arc trained 



