HOW TO SET VINES. 281 



A ■word or two upon the mode of setting. There is a 

 great deal of talk in the books about the pains that should be 

 taken in setting trees and vines. If we set out a very large 

 tree, it is necessary to take pains, the risks are great, but if 

 we set out little ones, the risks are very small, and no great 

 care is necessary. You will find sometimes that you are di- 

 rected to make a little mound, and very carefully place all 

 the roots in a particular way, packing the ground very care- 

 fully, and spending a great deal of time upon it. This seems 

 to me to be totally unnecessary. If yon have vines of the size 

 I have indicated, with roots about a foot long, it is very easy 

 to set them out rapidly. I have, with the assistance of one 

 man, set out six hundred in half a day, and I never could 

 see but what they grew just as well as if we had spent ten 

 minutes upon each one. The ground being in perfect con- 

 dition, he removed a quantity of earth with a shovel, I put 

 the vine in its place, he threw the earth back, and I put my 

 foot upon it, and that was the end of it. 



They should not be set very deep. As I have indicated, 

 most of the roots were about five inches below the surface. Of 

 course, we do not want to set them any deeper than that. 



My custom is, to place them about four inches at the centre, 

 where the roots are given ofi*, with the ground sloping per- 

 haps an inch down to the end of the roots, so that they shall 

 be at the depth which they prefer to keep, about five inches. 



One difiiculty in setting them deeper than that is this : a new 

 system of roots will start out above the old one the very first 

 ' year, and those roots, in my experience, invariably run away 

 w^ith the vine. The roots of the lower system gradually come 

 to a stand-still, and finally decay, and the vine seems to be 

 lifted out of the ground, leaving the roots badly exposed, with 

 no stem below the surface at all. This is to be avoided. 



Where surface-roots have been made the first year, it is im- 

 portant to remove the earth a little and cut them off. There 

 should be but one system, one story, so to speak, of roots. 



They should all start from one point, at the proper depth, 

 and it pays, I think, to cut off all the others. But if the 

 plant is set shallow, not more than four inches deep, and the 

 nodule where the roots start from kept out of ground, of 

 course none will grow from that point. 



36 



