Part II 



Practical Grape Growing 



Chapter V 

 How to Start a Vineyard 



The site and soil have much to do with making a vineyard profitable or unprofitable; hence 

 too great care cannot be used in selecting a location 



The Site 



The ideal site has an eastern or southeastern exposure, with sufficient slope to secure surface 

 drainage, but not enough to wash badly in heavy rains, and high land is safer from late frosts 

 than lowland. 



The Soil 



The ideal soil is a reddish sandy loam, porous enough and deep enough to a reddish clay 

 subsoil to absorb the heaviest rains without becoming boggy or seepy. Such soils in the South 

 are generally well supplied with potash, one of the most essential soil ingredients for the vine. 

 There are extensive tracts of this soil in many parts of the Southwest, especially bordering rivers 

 and creeks, along the bluffs, where fine sites and drainage are secured. They are frequent on the 

 Red River, five to ten miles wide on either side; also along the Sabine, the Neches, the Trinity, 

 the Brazos, the Colorado, and other streams, and there are vast tracts in the Panhandle of Texas, 

 in Oklahoma, Arkansas, Louisiana, in fact thruout the South, well adapted to the grape. 



Such soils and locations are also less invaded by the mildews and rots, so disastrous to vine- 

 yards in low, damp, heavy lands, and are less subject to killing by late frosts. In far Western 

 and Southwestern Texas and New Mexico, where irrigation can be applied, the soil and atmosphere 

 are highly congenial to the grape, even to the profitable growing of the Vinifera varietiss, if 

 grafted upon resistant roots. (Page 219.) 



But no one need be without good table and market grapes, even if his soil is heavy and 

 damp, for a little drainage, subsoiling and fertilizing will largely correct what nature has failed 

 to do. 



Next to the red and chocolate sandy soils come the black sandy soils on red or yellow clay. 

 The poorest are the low blue livery soils, that are seepy in wet, and "hard as a bone" in dry 

 weather. But the black waxy and adobe soils, in good sites, planted to some varieties, give 

 good results. 



Preparation of the Soil 



Having chosen the site, the soil should be thoroughly prepared. Failure to do this will 

 cause many sad crops of disappointment. 



The land, if beset with stumps and rocks, should have them all dug or pulled out to a depth 

 below where the plow will reach. When the land is free to be worked at your will by the plow in 

 all its parts, to at least two feet in depth, lay off the rows preferably running from northeast to 

 southwest, if land will permit then plow in narrow lands, the width that the rows are to be apart. 



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