HARDY GRAPES. 45 



to 50 pounds of nitrogen, the same amount of phosphoric acid, 

 and 9 pounds of magnesia, with some lime. To obtain these 

 substances in the best and cheapest forms, I am using a formula 

 made up as follows : 



225 pounds high grade Sulphate of Potash, 100 pounds Sulphate 

 of Ammonia, 200 pounds Nitrate of Soda, 200 pounds South 

 Carolina Floats, 50 pounds Sulphate of Magnesia, 75 pounds 

 Plaster. Total, 850 pounds. 



These ingredients are nearly all quite soluble and the vines are 

 able to appropriate them as required through the growing season. 

 They should cost sixteen dollars or more, according to the 

 quantity required or the facilities for obtaining them. 



What are the drawbacks? It is not all plain sailing. You may 

 cultivate a vine or two in the garden and with reasonable care 

 expect success, but when you plant an acre you invite insects and 

 diseases, by offering them opportunities for development and 

 increase. Sometimes these enemies interpose very serious 

 obstacles to success. Generally, however, they are easily kept 

 under the control of the wide-awake and persistent cultivator. 

 The steel-blue beetle, Haltica chalyhea, appears early in the 

 spring, at the time of the swelling of the buds, and does its injury 

 by eating a hole into their sides, which arrests the development of 

 the shoot with its fruit. Hand picking is a perfect and the only 

 efficient remedy. It should be attended to before the injury 

 rather than after. The common rose bug, Melolontha subsjnnosa, 

 makes its appearance just as the vines begin to show bloom, and 

 each one easily consumes the embryo grapes of a cluster at a 

 meal. By holding a small cup partially filled with water, having a 

 little kerosene on its surface, under him and suddenly calling his 

 attention to it, he will, unless the weather is very warm, accept 

 your invitation and drop in to investigate. One person by this 

 means can capture a thousand in a brief time, and an hour or two 

 in the cool of the day will generally be ample to keep them from 

 doing much injury. If they should appear in such numbers as to 

 threaten destruction to the crop, I should put on force enough to 

 keep them down, but, I should at the same time search out their 

 breeding place, which is generally a field of grass near by, and in 

 some way prevent their future multiplication. It does not 

 necessarily follow, however, that the numbers appearing in one 

 season have any very close relation to those that present themselves 

 in the succeeding; one. 



