THE GRAPES TO GROW. 295 



for seventeen years, of the time of the first freeze, and the 

 temperature of that freeze, and the earliest date at which ice 

 would be made in a grape that was nearly ripe has been the 

 17th of October, and that only once ; the 21st of October is 

 the earliest, with that single exception. Whether that will 

 hold good in other places, I do not know. If you are in a 

 location where you get freezes earlier than that, you are sim- 

 ply further north than I am ; you are out of the range of 

 the best success and must be content with less than six 

 pounds to the vine, if you succeed at all. Here I can suc- 

 ceed in getting my grapes up to a condition of very fine qual- 

 ity before the 17th of October. Some favorable years, they 

 are very good the first week in October, but ordinarily, I 

 commence harvesting soon after the first of October ; the 

 main crop is not picked until about the last of the season ; 

 when it gets so that it is risky to leave them out any longer, 

 then I pick them. In this way, the quality improves all the 

 time ; there is a greater development of sugar. It is almost 

 impossible to keep them on the vines too long, but I have 

 found one or two years that they did depreciate a little on the 

 vine ; after they had attained what seemed to be their perfect 

 maturity they did not improve afterwards. , 



I have said that I grow the Concord. I have been growing 

 grapes for market nearly twenty years, and the result of all 

 that experience is this, that if the Concord were blotted out 

 of existence, I would not attempt to grow a pound of grapes 

 to sell. That is putting it in as few words as I can do it. I 

 set two years ago a vineyard of two thousand vines, nineteen 

 hundred and seventy-five of which were the Concord ; I set 

 out twenty-five others as playthings. People frequently come 

 and tell me they want some grapes, and ask me what they 

 shall plant. I tell them to set the Concord. They say, " I 

 have got a vine of the Concord, what else shall I set?" My 

 advice always has been, "Plant Concords all the time, until 

 you get as many as your family can eat, and then fool away 

 your money on other varieties as much as you have a mind 

 to." There are other grapes that are better, there are other 

 grapes that are earlier, but there is no vine that comluncs all 

 the good qualities of the Concord ; there is no other that can 

 be relied upon. I do not know of any other that will uni- 



