TO PREPAEE LAND FOR GRAPES. 277 



setting out the vines. In preparing the land, but very little 

 of that kind of labor is required that used to be talked about 

 a great deal in the books some years ago. We used to be 

 told that we must trench our soil two or three feet deep, if 

 we would grow grapes successfully. I think that idea has 

 been exploded, as far as we are concerned. If you go south 

 five hundred or a thousand miles, there it is necessary to 

 trench ; there you want to get a more permanent moisture. 

 It is a different kind of business there from what it is here. 

 Here we want to get all the effect of the sunshine that we 

 can ; we want to get all the heat and retain it all. Hence, 

 the original preparation here should be very shallow, and the 

 after-cultivation should be of the same character. We want 

 to encourage the formation of roots near the surface all the 

 time, and never to induce them to go deeply, out of the in- 

 fluence of the sunshine. The preparation, therefore, should 

 be simply shallow ploughing. Perhaps " shallow " is not suf- 

 ficiently definite. Some people call three inches " shallow," 

 and others call seven inches " shallow." I would not plough 

 the ground for grapes more than seven or eight inches ; — that 

 I call shallow ploughing. I think there is another advantage 

 in not going below that. ]\Iy investigations into the charac- 

 ter of the grape have satisfied me that the roots are not, gen- 

 erally, more than five or six inches deep. They are spread 

 out in the ground, a perfect network, at about that depth, 

 with only an occasional straggling root growing down deeper. 

 The grape, as I have said, is a plant which loves heat, and it 

 very naturally keeps its roots near the surface, where they get 

 the heat. 



It makes but very little difference in what condition the 

 ground is before you begin. There is no coating of manure 

 that can be put upon the soil that equals the sward ; I do not 

 know of anything that compares with it. It is not very 

 comfortable to work upon the first year, or until it has rotted, 

 but I would never rot it Ijy raising a crop ; that uses up half 

 of it. I would rather the nutriment contained in the sod 

 would go to my grapes that I am planting than to something 

 else beforehand. 



It used to be a theory among grape-growers I believe, 

 some years ago, aud some of them hold to it still, that the 



