28 STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY 



of people, and thus au army of men and women have become skilled to 

 do this work. 



It is much easier to care for a vineyard now than it formerly was; 

 vastly so. Not that anything new or surprising has been developed, but 

 the methods are simple. They have learned to follow the simplest 

 courses, to adopt the ways that are the most advantageous. There was 

 once much diversity and crudeness displayed in pruning. Now nearly 

 every one pursues the simplest of all methods, to-wit, a single cane from 

 the ground and four arms, two on each wire extending either way from 

 the main body. All vineyards nowadays are provided with trellis, 

 consisting of two No. 11 wires, fastened to posts, set about 24 to 30 

 feet apart along the rows, the top wire about five feet above the ground 

 and the lower wire at about three feet. To these wires the main cane 

 is fastened in an upright position, and to them the four arms, extending 

 laterally, are also tied. These arms contain a sufficient number of buds 

 — forty or fifty — to assure the crop of fruit, provided the steel-beetles 

 and cut-worm do not interfere too largely. These are the main insect 

 pests that have thus far appeared to destroy the fruit. The beetles, 

 when they abound, are gotten rid of by picking them off or knocking 

 them off into a basin holding a little kerosene. The cut-worms are much 

 more serious. They are sometimes very abundant, and if left alone will 

 greatly deplete or utterly destroj- all the buds in the vineyard, causing 

 the vines to look, in June, nearly as bare as in October. They consum- 

 mate their ravages in the night, and once men with lanterns hunted and 

 destroyed them, a very expensive and ineffectual process. Then it was 

 found that using tin about the vines and posts was a good preventive, 

 and here at Lawton this course became generally adopted. But tins are 

 expensive and the work of placing them and removing them is con- 

 siderable, and it was like a bonanza in the way of labor-saving when 

 they learned that a light band of wool tied about the cane was equally 

 effective. I think the people of Lawton first got the idea of using wool 

 for this purpose from Prest. Morrill at the time of the meeting of the 

 State Horticultural society at Lawton some years ago. Soon after, a 

 few of the vineyardists began experimenting with this method of shut- 

 ting off the cut-worms, and announced that they found the process 

 effective. The result is that now everyone has adopted this little scheme, 

 and it is an immense saving in time and labor and a great relief from 

 anxiety. 



Unless cut-worms are circumvented, there is no assurance of a crop 

 of grapes, and the band of wool about the vine seems to be a tie of 

 safety. 



Again, in the matter of machinery for cultivating the vineyard, there 

 has been considerable advance. Much of the hand labor that was 

 formerly necessary has been eliminated by the use of the horse hoe and 

 other improved appliances which render a saving in time and labor. 



Formerly, a small vineyard, yielding a comparatively small quantity 

 of fruit, afforded quite an income. Now-a-days it requires a large vine- 

 yard, a great deal of fruit, to bring an equal sum of money. The margin 

 of profit has been so greatly reduced that it so nearly approaches the 

 vanishing point as sometimes to vanish utterly. In raising grapes for 

 a livelihood, it has become far more necessary than ever before to 

 observe all the conditions that tend to success or failure. This is now 

 so well understood by experienced grape-raisers that, while there is not 



