92 MANUAL OF AMERICAN GRAPE-GROWING 







vetch, oats, barley, cow-horn turnip, rape, rye and buckwheat. 

 Combinations of these usually make the seed too costly or 

 the trouble of sowing too great. Yet some combinations of 

 a leguminous and non-leguminous crop would seem to make 

 the best green crop for the grape. Thus, a bushel of oats or 

 barley plus ten pounds of clover or twenty pounds of winter 

 vetch, a combination often used in orchards, should prove 

 satisfactory in the vineyard. Or, doubling the amount of 

 seed for each, these crops could be alternated, with a change 

 in the rotation every four or six years, with cow-horn turnip 

 or rape. Turnip and rape require at least three pounds of 

 seed to the acre. 



The cover-crop is sown in midsummer, about the first of 

 August in northern latitudes, and should be plowed under in 

 the fall or early spring. Under no circumstances should the 

 green crop be permitted to stand in the vineyard late in the 

 spring to rob the vines of food and moisture. The weather 

 map must be watched at sowing time to make sure of a moist 

 seed-bed. Plate III illustrates two vineyards with well-grown 

 cover-crops. 



TILLAGE 



Grape-growers are not in the fog that befuddles growers 

 of tree-fruits in regard to tillage. He is a sloven, indeed, who 

 permits his vines to stand a season in unbroken ground, and 

 there are no growers who recommend sod or any of the modified 

 sod-mulches for the grape. Tillage is difficult in hilly regions 

 and the operation is often neglected in hillside vineyards, as 

 in the Central Lakes region of New York, but even here some 

 sort of tillage is universal. The skip of a single season in till- 

 ing stunts the vines, and two or three skips in successive seasons 

 ruin a vineyard. No one complains that grapes suffer from 

 over-tilling as one frequently hears of tree-fruits. There is no 

 tonic for the grape that compares with cultivation when the 



