130 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



growing ; and I am sensible more and more, with every suc- 

 ceeding year, that we have interfered too much with the grape 

 to obtain the best success. We prune too much, we manure too 

 much, we trench the ground too deeply ; and finally, by this 

 perpetual interference — by summer pruning and artistic training 

 into set forms which we insist upon — Ave have actually deprived 

 ourselves of a portion of the crop at least. In the first place, 

 it will be immediately apparent to every horticulturist present 

 that a crop that requires heat must have its roots within reach 

 of the influence of the summer sun. Now, in our Massachusetts, 

 and throughout the North, the soil does not get heated suffi- 

 ciently for the roots of the grape during the summer to a 

 greater depth than to about twelve inches. If you trench 

 below that and manure, as is usual, the subsoil, the manure will 

 invite the roots of the grape down into that colder subsoil. 

 They are sure to go there, and they pump up crude and imma- 

 ture juices, which do not feed the grape so properly as those do 

 which are nearer the surface, and which are ripened and elab- 

 orated by the action of the heat of the sun. I think I may say 

 that I know that to be true. Let me relate an incident in my 

 practice which led me to consider that subject — for I used to 

 trench. When I began, I followed the books, and I had a qual- 

 ified success. I had a success so much greater than my neigh- 

 bors that they came to me to know how I grew grapes in my 

 garden in Boston. I followed the books and the methods prac- 

 tised by horticulturists, and might have done so up to this day, 

 had it not been for a certain incident which happened, which led 

 me to plant nearer the surface. We had been planting, and 

 Saturday, at night, we had one vine left over, which we laid in 

 by the heels by the side of the garden walk to be planted on 

 Monday morning. We forgot it, and it began to grow. Of 

 course we left it there, and in the course of the summer that 

 recumbent stem pushed out roots into ^.he hot surface-sand of 

 the path. They did not go there for moisture, for it was not 

 there ; nor for manure, for it lay over the edge of the sandy 

 path ; and I coirid see no other roason for their going into that 

 surface-soil, except the heat. That vine remains there to this 

 day ; it was never planted. On the garden side, which was a 

 tulip bed originally, I followed a root going out from this vine 

 twenty-five feet into that soil, four inches from the surface only. 



