756 PRACTICE OF GARDENING. PART I IT, 



of grapes, and particularly the small kinds, which generally make weak wood. By 

 grafting the weak and delicate growing vines, as the blue Frontignac, upon robust and 

 vigorous stocks, as the Syrian, it will produce well-sized handsome bunches, almost as 

 large as those of the Hamburgh." The Syrian vine, raised from seed, is greatly pre- 

 ferable to all others for stocks. If the seed degenerate to a kind of wildness, so much 

 the greater will be the vigor of the plants, and the higher the flavor of the sorts grafted 

 on them. At the pruning season select cuttings for grafts from the best bearing branches, 

 in general preferring the bottom part of last year's shoot ; preserve them, by inserting 

 them three parts of their length in pots, till wanted. The season for grafting in stoves 

 is the beginning of January ; in the open air, the middle of March. On small stocks not 

 more than one inch in diameter, cleft-grafting will be found the most proper ; but, upon 

 larger stocks, whip-grafting is to be preferred. As vine-grafts do not take so freely as 

 those of most other fruits, the operation must be performed with the greatest care. 

 But the most eligible mode of grafting vines is that by approach, in which case either the 

 stock or scion must be growing in a pot. Strong plants, two years potted, are to be 

 preferred for the open air ; but, for a vinery or hot-house, plants from the nursery may 

 be potted, or shifted, if already in pots, and inarched the same season. In whip or cleft 

 grafting, the clay may be taken off when the scion has made shoots five or six inches 

 long ; but here both clay and bandage should remain two or three months after the graft 

 has formed a union, lest the grafted part spring from the stock. 



4814. Knight finds grafting most successful when the lower part of the scion consists of two-year-old 

 wood, and when the graft is well covered with clay kept moist, or if the branch be on a horizontal trellis 

 with a pot or saucer placed under the graft, and the point of junction kept well covered with earth occa- 

 sionally watered. (Hort. Trans, iv. 105.) 



4815. Braddick has made several experiments on grafting vines : he found the scion generally sodden 

 by the bleeding of the stalk ; but, at last, he contrived by a very close bandage round the graft to force the 

 sap of the stock up through the vessels of the scion, when the latter grew. From these, and various other 

 experiments, he says, " I feel confident in stating, that healthy vines may be successfully grafted with 

 young wood of the preceding year's growth, from the time that the shoots of the stocks which the grafts 

 are to be put upon, have made four or five eyes, until midsummer, with every prospect of the graft's 

 growing, and without the least danger of the stocks suffering by bleeding. They may likewise be grafted 

 with shoots of the same summer's growth, worked into the rind of the young wood, from the time that the 

 young bunches of grapes become visible on the stocks till July, out of doors ; or till a month later, under 

 glass. The operation must not be performed later than the periods here specified, because time is 

 necessary for the young shoots of the graft to become hard and ripen before winter." (Hort. Trans. 

 v. 204.) 



4816. Culture. For the culture of the vine in the forcing department, see Chap. VII. 

 Sect. II. What follows concerns chiefly the management of vines in the open air. 



4817. Soil. The vine will thrive in any soil that has a dry bottom ; in such as are rich and deep, it will 

 grow luxuriantly and produce abundance of large fruit ; in shallow, dry, chalky, gravelly, or schistous 

 soils, it will produce less fruit, but of better flavor. The greater part of the vineyards of France, Bosc ob- 

 serves (Cours comptet d 1 Agriculture, &c. art. Vigne], are on a soil argil-calcareous: sometimes primitive, 

 as those near Dijon ; and sometimes secondary, as those at Bourdeaux. Argillaceous gravel is the next 

 in frequency, as near Nismes and Montpelier, and that which produces the Vins des Graves of Bourdeaux. 

 Both good and bad wines are produced from the debris of granites ; among the former are the cotes roties 

 and hermitage on the Rhone. The excellent wines of Anjou are made from vines growing among schis- 

 tous rocks. Wines which are made from vines planted in chalky soils, are weak, colorless, and do not 

 keep well, as those of Champagne. Wines grown on the ashes discharged from volcanoes are excellent, 

 as those of Vesuvius and Etna. Soils surcharged with oxide of iron, red or yellow, are not less proper for 

 making good wine. Retentive clays are the worst soils for the vine; the flowers are in great part abor- 

 tive ; the fruit, if it sets, does not ripen ; the shoots not ripening well are more easily affected by frosts ; 

 and the wine, if any can be made, is weak and flavorless. Such a soil, even when in "a warm climate, is 

 particularly obnoxious to the vine, as Bosc observed in the botanic garden established at Charlestown, in 

 South Carolina, by Michaux. There vines brought from France produced for six months in the year, 

 buds, leaves, and shoots; flowers, the greater part of which proved abortive, and green and ripe berries 

 This circumstance, he considers, will prevent the successful culture of the vine in that part of America. 



4818. Switzer observes, that the soil for the vine should be light, having a bottom of chalk or gravel 

 under a surface of about two feet deep and free from springs ; it cannot be too hot nor too dry, provideu 

 it be not in its own nature so very barren that nothing will grow upon it. If given to brambles, it is a 

 certain sign of fitness, as no plant whatever is so co-natural to the vine as this shrub. In chalky-bottomed 

 lands, and in gravel, which is not springy or spewy, grapes are the largest and sweetest of any ; and where 

 these are most abundant, we dare challenge even Paris itself to excel us. (fr. Fruit Gard. 149.) 



4819. Hitty having observed a vine at Betvoir Castle growing out of the stony foundation of a wall, with- 

 out any other roots than what were fixed therein, producing better fruit, and earlier ripe, than any other 

 in the open ground in these gardens, advises the mixture of lime- rubbish, brick-bats, &c. for a foot deep 

 in the bottom of wall-borders destined for the vine. (Tr. on Fr. Tr. 12.) 



4820. Lawrence says, " he cannot easily be brought to think that any soil or situation can be too dry foi 

 the roots of the vine, after having seen at Barnwall, near Oundle, a flourishing vine grow from between 

 the joints of an old castle-wall, near twenty feet high from the ground, and which produced admirable 

 crops of grapes when well managed." (Fruit Gard.) 



4821. Speechly says, " the soil in which I have known the vine to prosper in the most superlative degree 

 without artificial aid, was a kind of rich sandy loam, intermixed with beds of materials like jointed slate 

 or stone, so very soft in its nature as almost to be capable of being crumbled between the fingers." Strong 

 and deep lands most suitable for tillage are the least so for vines, and hence the introduction of vineyards 

 would have no bad effect respecting agriculture." (Tr. on the Vine, 29.) 



4822. Manures. Dung, Speechly observes, should not be permitted to approach the roots of vines till it 

 be perfectly reduced to a kind of black mould. Soot, wood-ashes, pigeons' and hens' dung, he considers 

 too hot for the root of the vine ; pond-mud and moor-earth too cold. Stableyard-dung is too spirituous, 

 hot, and fiery, when introduced before its heat is thoroughly abated. Some sorts of lime are bad ; but 

 others might be advantageous, if introduced into vine-compost. " Vines are greatly injured in their roots 

 by the common practice of laying lime-rubbish for the bottom floor in the preparation of the ground. 

 Blood, the offal of animals or shambles' manure, horn-shavings, old rags, hair, shavings of leather, bone- 

 dust, dung of deer and sheep, and human ordure," are admissible when duly meliorated by time, a win- 



