Summer Meetings 6i 



with the vine, poisoning the fruit and vine causing the rot. With the 

 high trellis the air becomes dryer and less liable to deposit its load of 

 fungi on the vine. Then another important point is that no grapes will 

 ripen properly if exposed to the continuous rays of the sun, a great many 

 sun-scalding and thereby destroying the grapes. In spreading these vines, 

 out over the trellis wire they form a shade; the grape being heavier than 

 the foliage, swing down below the wire, leaving the foliage on top, where 

 they come in direct contact with the sun that they may be able to do their 

 work as evaporators, throwing off the water and leaving the necessary 

 chemicals in the vine to produce both w^ood and fruit. The Missouri 

 Reisling, Elvira, Clinton and Delaware, not making so much wood growth, 

 are tied to stakes without wire and are cultivated both ways. 



Cultivation is another important matter, as in all farm work without 

 cultivation you get no crop. 



We begin in the spring as soon as vegetation starts and plow with 

 double-shovel both ways, completely pulverizing the soil, following with 

 double-pointed or forked grape hoes, digging up the soil around the vine, 

 keeping down all grass and weeds. 



Believing that "Cleanliness is nigh unto GodHness," and the same 

 adage will apply to a vineyard as to a person, this cultivation is contin- 

 ued up to July 20th or later. Then we rest from our cultivation, but 

 "Our works do follow us." 



Winter pruning a grape vine does not require a man with an eye for 

 beauty, but an eye to find and know the vine that will produce the most 

 grapes the coming season, and to leave the vine so it will produce more 

 vines for the same purpose next season. It takes practical work to do 

 this. In our vineyard as much of the old wood as it is possible is taken 

 out, leaving the last season's growth to produce the young vines with the 

 grapes. Care is taken to see that this vine left started from a vine that 

 was grown the season before it. A vine that comes direct from a vine 

 grown three or more years before it is more of the nature of a water 

 sprout, long jointed and pithy, and will not produce as many grapes 

 and of a poorer quality than the former. For these trellissed vines we 

 allow two or three of these vines left, so they will reach to the trellis wire 

 and along the wire two to four feet. For the stakes where we have no 

 trellis they are left shorter, but the same care to save the best vines and 

 to leave it so it will make new vines for the next season's crop. Then 

 comes the summer pruning and tying up of the vines, which require the 

 same skill and more care than the winter pruning and tying. All weakly 

 vines or sprouts that have no grapes are pulled off while young, and 

 the young prospective grape producing vines are cared for and properly 



