411 MISSOURI STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



ncrative field of occupation. 'Well," I hear it said, "you had better 

 raipc a market grape and bring your fruit to market in succession." Yes, 

 sir, suppose every grape grower of any amount of acres set in grape 

 vines (and ii he wants to make the production of grapes his business, he 

 must have that) would send his fruit to market, they would overstock the 

 market or markets so much the fruit would not bring the cost of trans- 

 portation, besides not all the bunches are marketable. Now, what shall 

 we do with them.-* And where disease has set in, in the vineyards, and 

 spoiled the bunches so they are unfit for market, what then.'' Make 

 them into wine is the only alternative. 



Against mildew on the leaf, and rot on the berry, we have applied 

 some remedies — but to what extent.'' We have lost our crop, scientific 

 observations proved that rot is not caused by stings of insects, but by 

 the spores of an injurious fungus, against which there seems to be no 

 other remedy, but protection from the contamination of the floating 

 spores in the air. We bagged our grapes and the result was good, some 

 bunches in paper bags would not ripen, and the canes have not made a 

 . healthy and vigorous growth. We thought there must be something 

 else to be looked after and we found starvation, want of proper nourish- 

 ishment was the cause of that; we then commenced to feed the roots 

 and rootlets with the proper fertilizers, such as barn-yard manure, lime, 

 wood ashes, bone dust, sulphate of iron and copper, scrapings of our 

 town streets, etc. We have sprinkled over the tilled surface of the land 

 the liquid of manure from the slaughter houses, and the result was, that 

 at our exhibitions and fairs those grapes raised in the open air without 

 any protection whatever on such fertilized vineyards, were awarded first 

 premiums in competition with those pets, raised under protection or in 

 bags. In the discussion on grapes at the meeting of the Missouri State 

 Horticultural society, at West Plains, Howell county, a member made 

 the remark that a vineyard bears well until about five years old, then 

 they begin to rot. And why.'' Because the fertilizing elements proper 

 to a healthy production of the grapes are exhausted, and consequently 

 starvation and disease. The same gentleman made a sec- 

 ond remark that stawberries planted between the rows are a preventive 

 of rot. My experience has proven that where strawberries were 

 grown in the vineyard grapes rotted the most. As a matter of course, 

 they helped impoverish the land, and my vineyard is proof of that. A 

 neighboring vineyard changed owners about a year or so ago. Under 

 the former owner, the grapes rotted, from year to year, so that the prod • 

 uct of grapes did not pay the taxes of that land. The present owner 

 commenced to manure and cultivate thoroughly, and at the fruit exhi- 



