204 GRAPE CULTURE AND 



warm hillsides, sloping down to the valley, which will give 

 you a choicer product than the rich valleys anyway, though 

 perhaps not quite so much in seasons free from frost. It is 

 discouraging to see a vineyard, rich in promise of a. bountiful 

 crop, cut down and blackened in a single night, although the 

 damage is seldom so great as it appears at first sight. 



Then plant your lowest blocks with such varieties as will 

 start late and bear well even from the lower buds. The Mar- 

 sanne, Green Hungarian, Pedro Ximenes (generally called 

 Sauvignon Vert, Colombar erroneously) Palomino (Golden 

 Chasselas, erroneously of Napa), Clairette Blanche and Mataro 

 are safest, and will yield a good crop even if the first growth 

 is frosted, under a treatment I shall describe later. So much 

 in regard to locating and planting as preventath'C measures. 

 Among the other mechanical preventatives we will consider 



ist. Late Pruning. This is advocated and practiced by 

 some, who argue that by deferring the pruning until May, when 

 the vine has already grown six inches or more, they can keep 

 the lower buds on the shoots dormant, as the upper buds start 

 first, and if they wait until danger from frost is past and then 

 prune, they will have a crop from the lower buds. This is 

 .no doubt true, but the vine must also necessarily receive a 

 severe shock, and be enfeebled thereby, especially as they 

 bleed very severely if pruned at that time. It also makes the 

 fruit very much later, there is danger of imperfect ripening 

 and immature growth in fall. Moreover, it is a great waste 

 of energy, to allow the vine to produce so many shoots and 

 -then prune them off. For all these reasons I do not think 

 the practice should prevail. 



2nd. High Training. Some grow their stool pruning va- 

 rieties with heads four and even five feet high, claiming that 

 .they suffer less thus then when pruned to low heads. This may 

 be sometimes the case, but in seasons like the last we have 

 seen that in the same piece of vineyard, sometimes the upper 



