The Vineyards of Vine land. . 327 



worse than to get a lame knee in picking from a low trellis. This sys- 

 tem is somewhat expensive, but is gaining in favor. 



The Vineland Horticultural Society has for two years past awarded 

 the first premium for the best vineyard, all things considered, to Wil- 

 liam A. Simmons. It consists of seven hundred vines, planted in the 

 spring of 1867, on land which had borne sweet potatoes one year, and 

 fertilized with muck compost. The oak stumps Mr. Simmons ex- 

 ti'acted with a machine ; the pines were allowed to rot — which result 

 generally ensues in about two years. The holes he dug two feet deep, 

 and three in diameter. The vines were planted eight feet by ten — a 

 few rows ten by twelve — and eighteen inches deep. With the soil, 

 as he filled the holes, he mixed about one third of a common barrow 

 load of muck, not composted, but which had been pulverized by the 

 action of summer and winter weather. The first year he trained to one 

 cane, and gave them clean cultivation. The vines were one year old 

 when planted, grown by himself from open-air cuttings. The growth 

 was superior. The next spring, 186S, he gave each vine two shovel- 

 fuls of marl on the surface, and the growth was extraordinary — in 

 some cases twenty feet. He trained to double arms, on a low trellis, as 

 recommended by Mr. Strong, and from each vine he that year took 

 about one and a half pounds of fruit of very superior quality — hardly 

 a cluster being other than perfect. The growth of wood, he thinks, was 

 excessive, as, deeming it necessaiy to cut back severely, the best buds 

 were cut away, and he got less fruit than ought to have been the case 

 with such strong vines. Still his crop exceeded three thousand pounds ; 

 the quality, as before, very superior. 



Mr. L. W. Smith, in 1868, picked eleven hundred pounds of grapes 

 from eight}'-eight vines, which netted him one hundred and thirty-five 

 dollars, or at the rate of nine hundred and seven dollars and fifty cents 

 per acre. The vines were planted by a previous owner, and Mr. Smith 

 thinks in 1864. In 1867 they yielded only thirty-six pounds. All the 

 manure Mr. Smith applied was one shovelful of unleached ashes to 

 each vine. In 1869, the yield from the same vines was something over 

 twelve hundred pounds. 



In 1866, Captain William T. Ross planted six hundred vines (one 



