PROPAGATION 37 



if the seed are sown in garden rows, and in pricking out when 

 true leaves appear if planted in flats. In ground that crusts, 

 an expedient is to mix grape seed with apple seed ; the apple 

 seedlings, being more vigorous, break the crust and act as 

 nurse plants to the more tender grapes. Sometimes it is help- 

 ful to the young plants to mulch the ground lightly with lawn 

 clippings or moss. Grape seedlings grow rapidly, often making 

 from two to three feet of wood in a season. 



The young plants are thinned or set to stand four or five 

 inches apart in the nursery row. At the end of the first season, 

 all plants are cut back severely and almost entirely covered 

 with earth by plowing up to the row on both sides. This 

 earth, of course, is leveled the following spring. If the seasons 

 are propitious and all goes well, the seedlings are ready for the 

 vineyard at the end of the second season, but if for any reason 

 they have fared badly during their first two years, it is much 

 better to give them a third season in the nursery. Seedling 

 vines are seldom as vigorous as those from cuttings, and un- 

 usual care must be taken in setting in the vineyard, though 

 the operation is essentially the same as that to be described for 

 vines from cuttings. The third season the vines are kept to 

 a single shoot and are pinched back when the canes reach a 

 length of five or six feet. In the autumn, they are pruned 

 back to two or three feet. In the spring of the fourth season, 

 the trellis is put up and a few fruits may be allowed to ripen. 



The vines of promise may now be selected. The plants, 

 however, must fruit twice or oftener before it can be told 

 whether hopes are consummated or must be deferred. Grow- 

 ing seedlings for new varieties is a game full of chances in which, 

 while there may be little immediate or individual gain, there 

 is much pleasure. It is hardly too much to say that the grape 

 industry of eastern America, with its 300,000 acres and 1500 

 varieties, betokens the good that has come from growing seed- 

 ling grapes. 



