WHAT TO DO WITH THE FARM. 5 



Mr. Bull, of Concord, to whose experiments and success and 

 intelligent communications on this subject the whole country is 

 under obligations, makes certain statements, (which have been 

 published in the annual reports of the State Board of Agricul- 

 ture,) to which I would invite your special attention. He 

 states : — 



Firstly — That wherever Indian corn will ripen, there the 

 grape will also ripen. (He refers to the Concord grape.) 



Secondly — That for field culture in our climate, trenching 

 and heavy manuring are not only unnecessary, but actually 

 injurious ; but that a soil cultivated to a sufficient depth, and 

 made sufficiently rich for producing a good crop of corn, is 

 deep enough and I'ich enough for grapes. Indeed, he claims 

 that, for our climate, the plants should not be set more than six 

 inches deep in the warm and dry soils, nor more than four 

 inches deep h\ those which are strong and moist. 



Thirdly — That it requires no more labor and expense " to 

 take care of" an acre of grapes than to "make" an acre of 

 corn, since the latter implies the necessity of carting on manure, 

 ploughing and successive hoeings, while the grapes need fertil- 

 izing with a little plaster of Paris, bone dust and ashes, only 

 once in four or five years, and consequently require less work to 

 keep down the weeds. As to pruning', he says : " A little wise 

 neglect is better than a too frequent or too severe application of 

 the knife." " You plough and cultivate as soon as the frost is 

 out, and again in the summer, to keep down the weeds ; and 

 you pinch the growing shoots two or three times to consolidate 

 the growing wood ; this is all the care they need until the crop 

 is ready to gather." Moreover, he affirms that, when planted 

 in rows eight or ten feet apart, and six feet apart in the row, 

 and treated in the manner described, the Concord grape needs 

 no protection in winter ; and that " they find at the West that 

 one man can take care of five acres of grapes, and the same 

 thing can be done here." 



Fourthly — As to pro/its, Mr. Bull makes the following state- 

 ments: — 



From the records of the agricultural society of Wirtemberg, 

 (in Germany,) which records have been kept for more than four 

 hundred years — about one-half the number have been tolerably 



