NOTES ON FRUIT CULTURE IN ILLINOIS. 



BY PROFESSOR TURNER. ILLINOIS COLLEGE. 



A. J. Downing, Esq. — Dear Sir : Since my 

 last, some facts have come under my notice 

 which I think may he of general interest. 



And first, in my last communication I 

 stated that the gentleman in St. Louis did 

 not summer-prune his grapes, as I then 

 supposed, on good authority ; hut I have 

 since learned, from a more reliable source, 

 that he does practice rigorous summer- 

 pruning, as well as training on very high 

 trellises. My own grapes last fall all 

 blasted, except a few on one Catawba and 

 one Catarobe vine, which bore a full crop, 

 on that part of the trellises which was 

 more than ten feet above the ground, though 

 they nearly all blighted below that point. 

 This Catarobe vine stands, also, in what 

 cultivators would generally consider the 

 worst possible location. It was planted 

 mainly for shade, ten feet east of a shed 

 and cherry tree, which shuts off all sun 

 from the west, and four feet north of a 

 wood-house, which wholly excludes the 

 southern sun from the roots ; a large peach 

 tree stands about six feet to the south end 

 of it, shading it also in that direction ; so 

 that the sun can rarely strike the ground 

 where it grows. Hard beaten paths — one 

 to my stable and another branching to my 

 carriage- house — pass directly under it ; and 

 indeed the whole surface is so firmly trod- 

 den for some feet all around it, that nothing 

 will grow but chick-weed ; and the ground 

 has never been stirred by any implement 

 since the vine was set — several years since. 

 And as I never expected any fruit from the 

 vine, I let it run at random up the trunk of 

 a dead locust tree, and have never once 

 touched it with a knife summer nor winter. 



Add to this a leading-trough, which con- 

 ducts water from a well twenty-four feet 

 deep to the stable-yard, makes a right 

 angle directly under this vine ; and the 

 water from the well, every time it is poured 

 in it, (which is always at least two or three 

 times each day,) runs over the angle in 

 the trough, and keeps the hard surface of 

 the ground drenched wet with cold water 

 and ice from one year's end to the other. 

 Yet this ugly, capricious vine, as if in 

 mocker} 7 at once of all my theories, my ex- 

 pectations, and my toils, last year bore a 

 full crop of good ripe grapes ; while all my 

 other vines which I have pruned, and tilled, 

 and trimmed, and manured, and salted, and 

 bone-dusted, and limed, and sulphured, and 

 root-pruned, and trenched, and trained up, 

 and trained down, and trained sideways, 

 all — all failed. Now if any of your cor- 

 respondents can tell why it ripened its 

 fruit, unless it was from sheer spite, — real 

 "malice prepense," as the gentry of the 

 satchel would say, — they can do more than 

 I can. However, it should be said that the 

 Catarobe has ripened ever with me better 

 than any other grape I ever had ; and a 

 gentleman, who is a professed amateur of 

 the vine, and has travelled extensively both 

 in this country and in Europe to study its 

 habits and wants, informs me that in this 

 western country he has noticed that this is 

 a general fact. But why should this vine 

 bear so much better, or, at least, ripen its 

 fruit so much better than any other Cata- 

 robe vines ? There is the mystery.* A 



* We do not know this Catarobe grape ; but if. as we sup- 

 pose, it is a native of Illinois, the matter is explained at once, 

 by its being at home in that climate. The Catawba, with us, 

 bears admirable crops, close pruned; and we suspect the dif- 

 ficulty with this, and other southern grapes in Illinois, is that 

 the climate in summer is not congenial to them. Ed. 



