THE VINEYARD IN SErTEMBER AND OCTOBER. 33 1 



THE VINEYARD IN SEPTEMBER AND OCTOBER. 



G L\S T J Oil N SO X , E X C 1-: L S 1 OK . 



As much as I would like to describe to the members of this so- 

 ciety the different kinds of work to be done in the vineyard in 

 September and October. I feel that I am hardly equal to the occa- 

 sion. Not that I don't understand the treatment the vines should 

 receive, but because I don't know how your vines have been taken 

 care of in the summer, and for years before. I feel about like a 

 doctor would feel prescribing for a case without seeing it. Now, 

 with the best of advice you are apt to make mistakes if you should 

 tend your vines after certain rules, not understanding when to use 

 exceptions. I could better tell you what to do this year than next 

 year. What would be the right thing this year, next year would 

 probably be wrong. According to the season one has to be pre- 

 pared to meet the different problems as they come up. 



Now it has a great deal to do with ripening and marketing 

 how your vines have been ,taken care of during the summer. In 

 summer everything looks promising, your vines are loaded with 

 fruit and your expectations run high, but when September comes 

 you will hear people ask each other if the crop is going to be ripe 

 this year. It puts me in mind of a man who had a great many vines, 

 and he bragged of his vines. He said he had an expert look at 

 them, and he said he never saw so many grapes and such nice ones. 

 I told him "if that's the case you must have exceptionally good 

 grape land." I thought I would see later about this great crop. 

 After I had mine harvested and sold, I asked him if his grapes were 

 ripe, and he said they had not started to color up. Then it was 

 time they should be covered up for the winter. There is where you 

 will be confronted with a problem which nobody can very well tell 

 you what to do about unless he sees the vines. Are you to take 

 them off green and receive very little for your labor or run the 

 chance of not getting your vines to ripen their wood with the fruit. 

 You stand a good chance of losing your vines the next winter if the 

 frost should strike them when the immature fruit is on. Here 

 you will have to learn for yourself what you would do and at the 

 same time what the vines can do. Nature tries to make up for bad 

 seasons. Sometimes it can't, and that's the time where you can by 

 watching help nature along. There are different ways of doing it 

 in this case. One way is to take off some of the bunches. It acts 

 on the same principle as taking off part of a load when a horse is 

 stuck with a heavy load. I am not in favor of gathering the grapes 

 the way so many do. When they start in they take off the whole 

 crop at one time. One objection to this is that they have too many 

 grapes to market in a short time, and another is, the grapes are 

 not all ripe. Grapes don't generally ripen all at once, unless you 

 leave them on until part of them are over-ripe. The way I do and 

 would advise others to do is to take off part of the crop as it ripens. 

 This makes cjuite a little more work, to be sure, but where a vine 



