82 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



Statement of Dr. Jahez Fisher. 



The specific plantation of native grapes which I enter for 

 premium, consists of sixty-one vines, set six feet apart and 

 trained upon a single trellis. The whole number are Concords, 

 and were planted in the summer of 1861, having been grown 

 from single eyes, started in pots under glass the previous March. 

 An under-drain was put in directly underneath where the vines 

 were afterward set. The ditch was dug three feet deep, and 

 the throat of the drain formed by placing flat stones like the 

 two sides of a steep roof upon the bottom. Stones and rubbish 

 were then filled in to within fifteen inches of the surface. 

 Fresh bones, with the flesh attached, were spread liberally upon 

 the rubbisli and the earth levelled. The soil is a strong, deep 

 loam, on a somewhat retentive bottom, having a south-easterly 

 slope. The row runs very nearly north and south, the vines 

 being planted on the east side of the trellis about a foot distant, 

 and leaning towards it. 



In the autumn of 1861, the vines were all cut down to within 

 two or three buds of the ground and left without protection. 

 In the spring of 1862 a trellis was built of posts and wire. 

 The posts were chestnut, 2 by 2, except one at each end, which 

 was 3 by 5, and braced in a foot. The posts were set ten feet 

 apart, two and a half feet deep, and were dipped in gas tar 

 before setting. I would now set them but six feet apart. Four 

 strands of No. 12, annealed, iron wire were attached to the 

 posts by staples made of the same wire. The lowest wire is 18 

 inches from the ground, and the others are placed at distances 

 of 14 inches, so that the top wire is just five feet from the 

 surface of the soil. These wires are coated with paraffine varnish 

 to keep them from rusting. During the summer of 1862 a 

 single shoot was trained perpendicularly from each vine, all 

 other growth being rubbed off as soon as it started, and all 

 laterals were pinched back to one leaf, and this operation was 

 repeated and continued as long as they made new growth. 



In the autumn of 1862 the first vine at one end of the row 

 was cut off at the third wire of the trellis. The second vine 

 was cut at the first or bottom wire, the third vine at the third 

 wire, the fourth at the first wire, and the remainder in the same 

 way, alternating between the first and third wire. Any vine tliat 

 had not made a good growth was again cut back again, as in 1861, 



