GRAPE CULTURE. 23 



Mr. Barnett had recommended the Delavrare, Merrimack, Wilder, 

 and similar varieties, but he winds up by saying that none are relia- 

 ble but the Hartford, Concord, and Martha. Any system that will 

 give you a trellis of well ripened wood will give you grapes. Mr. 

 Moore did not believe in laying down and covering vines. Con- 

 cords with well ripened wood will stand 20° below zero. His vines 

 are not injured in the tops by such severe cold, but the roots are 

 killed. He thought sudden changes worse than extreme cold. 

 He finds that the fruit ripens earlier when the ground is mulched — 

 the gain by protecting the roots compensates for the loss of heat 

 in summer. 



The native and foreign grapes are very different in habit — the 

 native will not stand severe pruning. In the Concord the base 

 bud is apt to be a leaf bud, and consequently the spurs should not 

 be pruned back to a single eye. He was surprised at Mr. Bar- 

 nett's statement that grapes would not ripen as early when trained 

 on buildings as on a trellis, and he had been astonished to find 

 grapes ripening earlier on stakes than on trellises, but he quickly 

 saw that the reason was that where they were tied to stakes more 

 sun was admitted to the ground. He took the premium on grapes 

 the 4th of September, less than seventy days from the time of 

 blooming, though we are a week or ten days later than at New 

 Haven. 



Mr. Barnett replied that Mr. Moore had misunderstood his 

 statement in regard to the comparative earliness of grapes on build- 

 ings and on trellises, and referred to the essa}-, which reads thus 

 about " grapes on the east, south, and west sides " — " It cannot be 

 •expected that grapes on buildings will always ripen as early as 

 those in the open garden under the best exposure." "As to the time 

 required for the maturing of grapes, Mr. Moore had spoken of sev- 

 enty days from blooming, which would be grand if possible to fully 

 ripen them in that time, but Mr. Barnett assured him that what he 

 had said in the essay, viz., " about a hundred days must intervene 

 from flowering to frost " w^as strictly correct, and his own observa- 

 tions were confirmed by those of others, in support of which he 

 referred to the article, " Grape Statistics," at Newburg, N. Y., in 

 the " Horticulturist," Vol. XX, p. 23 ; which reads thus : " Any 

 one that will fully ripen, y^ax after year by the 2oth of September 

 is worthy of cultivation, say within one hundred days after bloom- 

 ing. The time varies from 90 to 122 days," "as shown in the 



