Jane 5, 1S73. ] 



JOURNAL OF HOKIICDLTUKE AND COTTAGE GARDENER. 



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EVENING MUSINGS FOE PLAIN PEOPLE.— No. 5. 



VINES. 



NE of the most formiclable impediments tliat 

 the inexperienced encounter in s;rowingtheir 

 own Grapes, is a widely-disseminated and 

 accepted notion that one of the absolute 

 necessities of the case is an expensive border. 

 It is necessary to be dogmatic sometimes, 

 and I say that nothing of the kind is need- 

 ful. To grow fairly good useful Grapes, 

 such as hundreds of people with comfortable 

 homes and good gardens are longing for, an 

 expensive border is not really requii-ed in one case out of 

 ten. There is a notion abroad amongst would-be Grape- 

 growers that if they could have tm'f cut from some 

 gentleman's park five to ten miles away, their difficulties 

 would be at end, and good fruit would follow as a natural 

 consequence, but without the aristocratic turf the project 

 is hopeless. Against this I will venture an opinion that 

 the sod producing that gentleman's Grapes is not com- 

 posed of turf from his park. No, no. Gardeners, as a 

 rule, are not indulgetl in that way. They must provide 



Grapes without digging a park up, or not but what 



the park turf would be very valuable, and its removal, if 



made good by fresh sod. and seeds, be no loss but no 



matter, it is " park," and that is enough, and it must not 

 be touched. But a sensible man wUl not force a quarrel 

 ■with a person standing firmly by his own, but wOl look 

 out and get the best he can in other ways, and even then 

 if he fail he may console himself with the thought that 

 he has a proliibited park for a scapegoat to bear any 

 possible sina. 



As long as I am a gardener I shall never fight for a 

 bit of park, and this is the reason why. I once served 

 under a gardener who could not please with Grapes. 

 Border after border had been made until the cost, accord- 

 ing to the owner, reached X'lOO. The park was a stand- 

 ing defence with the gardener, who, in an impolitic ex- 

 pression, told the owner he did not deserve to have Grapes 

 as long as he kept a consecrated park. " Fetch it in," 

 •was his reply, " antl try again ; but mind, for the last 

 time." He tried and failed. Another took his oflice, 

 and without any apparent difticnlty produced satisfactory 

 Grapes. First-class Grapes cannot be produced without 

 a first-class border, and, mark this, not then without 

 otherwise fii'st-class treatment ; but inferior Grapes may 

 be grown, and are grown, in really excellent borders by 

 the want of proper in-door management and suitable 

 attention timely given. 



In some places a singular fatality would seem to attach 

 to all efforts at Grape-culture. An estate of, it may be, 

 20,0(10 or more acres gives a choice of soil for a Vine 

 border, yet first-class Grapes do not follow. Many in- 

 stances of this kind are found in, perhaps, every county 

 in England. Is the soil in these several cases wholly to 

 blame ? It will grow all kinds of trees useful and orna- 

 mental, and yet not produce Grapes. Still the Vine is 

 not a miffy, capricious, fanciful-feeding plant in its nature, 

 No. C36.— Vol XSIV., New Series. 



but is, in this respect, as accommodating as most things. 

 Is it not possible that many Grape fadures arise from 

 incorrect inside management, and the borders unjustly 

 bear the blame '? Many a condemned border would, I 

 am assured, prove its innocence could it liave a fair trial 

 by an unprejudiced judge. A very easy means of testing 

 the border of an unsatisfactoi-y house of Grapes is to train 

 a shoot or shoots outside the house on the warmest aspect 

 at command. If this outside growth is attended to by 

 pinching the laterals and stopping the terminal shoot at 

 the end of August, to arrest further extension and encou- 

 rage the wood ripening, it wdl prove the next season, by 

 either bad or good produce, whether or not it is the 

 border or the inside treatment that demands improving, 

 and wUl afford a useful hint for future guidance. I have 

 more than once seen the benefits resulting from this 

 exceedingly simple and absolutely costless experiment. 

 " But," it may be said, " it is quite natural that this fresh 

 yoimg outside shoot will bear, while the older crippled 

 stems of the Vines inside cannot be expected to do so to 

 the same extent." A prompt " hear, hear," to a remark 

 like that, because it at once admits a fault and acknow- 

 ledges a remedy. 



Before proceeding further, I wiU lay it down as an 

 axiom that whde the Vine is very tractable and accom- 

 modating in its nature, it will not submit to any mere 

 rule-of-thumb treatment with continued and unvarying 

 satisfaction — that is, the same routine suitable to one 

 house of Vines is not only not the best for all, but does not 

 always continue to be the best for the Vines and house in 

 question. For instance, Vines will for a number of years 

 afford good produce managed on the short-spur system 

 of pruning, but unless a very high and inteUigent system 

 of culture is continuously pm-sued a blank by this system 

 will sooner or later occur. That an obstinate (I can call 

 it nothing else) adherence to any single plan or system is 

 neither advisable nor profitable, many a fine range of im- 

 productive vineries plainly iiroclaims. I do not say a word 

 against the spur-system as a system, for I know by expe- 

 rience that it will afford splendid Grapes for I cannot say 

 how long, providing there are no omissions and mistakes 

 in other points of culture. But the same experience also 

 tells me — and I cannot disregard its teachings— that it is 

 not infallible, and that when it fads and is still persevered 

 in there is a suspicion of evidence of something that I 

 should like to call by a milder name than prejudice or 

 stupidity. More particular reasons as to the cause of 

 the frequent breakdown of this particular system may 

 eventually be submitted, but in the meantime it is only 

 mentioned as illustrative of the proposition that a single 

 formal stereotyped mode of culture is not rehable in all 

 cases to produce really useful and satisfactory Grapes. 



I will now revert to the primary object of this paper — 

 that an expensively made border is not necessarily an 

 indispensable and absolute condition in the production of 

 a useful supply of this much-coveted fruit. This is proved 

 in general by the excellent Grapes gi'own in almost every 

 district in the absence of elaborate and expensive border- 

 formations. It is more particularly pro%'ed— and always 



No 12SS.— Vol, XLIX., Old Series. 



