No. 7. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 569 



a light one horse plow, or with the horse hoe blade reversed. Lay 

 by the vineyard July 15 to 25 with a crop of crimson clover, cow 

 horn turnips or something to furnish humus or nitrogen or both. 



If I had advocated fertilizing vineyards 15 3'ears ago, some of my 

 neighbors would have thought I was a fit subject for a lunacy com- 

 mission, so grounded were they in the faith that vineyards did 

 not exhaust fertility, and while vineyards are doubtless less exhaus- 

 tive than many crops to the land, yet grapes come every year, they 

 are always demanding some element of fertility, and me must hus- 

 band our resources or eventually have poor vineyards. Starvation 

 rather than neglect is the history of the poor vineyards of our belt, 

 and it is contemporaneous to the Christianity of the Methodist 

 brother who said he had been a member of the Methodist church for 

 fifteen years and it had not cost him a cent. May the Lord have 

 mercy upon this kind of a Christian and this kind of a fruit raiser. 

 We really have no use for them here. 



We have found it necessary of late years to supplement the other 

 labor in our vineyards with spraying with Bordeaux to control rot, 

 and with arsenate of lead to control the grape berry moth and the 

 grape root worm (Fidia Viticidi). If rot has been in evidence the 

 season before in the vineyard, take no chances. Spray, and if a livid 

 brown spot about one-quarter inch in diameter appears on the young 

 leaf very early in the spring, spray, for this is the danger signal to 

 the grape grower and antedates the appearance of the rot on the 

 fruit. If there is no rot, spraying is often delayed until after blos- 

 soming, and arsenate of lead is added to the Bordeaux at the rate 

 of six pounds to the 100 gallons to control the berry moth and the 

 root worm. 



The root worm, whose habits and life cycle was not very well un- 

 derstood a few years ago, is the fly in our ointment at the present 

 time, but we are not on the ragged edge of anxiety as much as we 

 were. We can successfully fight them, and the matter is up to us. 



Our member of Congress, Mr. Bates, suc'ceeded in securing a 

 special appropriation of -f 7,000 for carrying on this work, and we 

 have had three government specialists studying the habits and 

 life cycle of the pest for a couple of seasons, and with their aid, we 

 are getting pretty well acquainted. The bug is not what the Irish- 

 man called one of the "dommed foreigners,-' but is of American 

 origin. 



I will next take up the harvesting and marketing of grapes. The 

 harvesting of Concord grapes in our section usually commences 

 about the 25th of September. The picking is mostly done by women; 

 the price varies from one cent to one and one-half cents for an 

 eight-pound basket; for the 40-pound crate three and four cents are 

 paid. One hundred and twenty-five to 175 baskets of eight pounds 

 is a day's work, but some extra swift pickers pick as high as 200 

 baskets per day. The cost of the eight-pound baskets with cover 

 is about 2 cents each. The cost of the 40 pound crate is 6 cents. 

 Most of the packing is now done in the field. A light stand is used, 

 holding three baskets. When a basket is full, the picker, who is 

 known by a number, places her number on the handle of the basket; 

 also the number of baskets she has picked during the day, and places 

 the basket under the vines out of the way of the gathering wagon. 

 87 



