22 AMERICAN GRAPE CULTURE. 



leave each one at liberty to judge for himself, 

 with the simple remark, that money spent in a 

 judicious preparation of the soil is capital well 

 invested, which is certain to return a good 

 interest. A vineyard well prepared will pay 

 better than one not so prepared : that may be 

 received as an axiom in vineyard culture. 



There are three principal methods of prepar- 

 ing the soil for a vineyard : trenching, trench 

 plowing, and subsoiling. The first, except for 

 small vineyards, and under peculiar circum- 

 stances, may be too expensive an operation for 

 general adoption : it is chiefly confined to the 

 garden. The second and third are exceedingly 

 useful, and may be adopted wherever a plow 

 can be run. We propose to give a brief de- 

 scription of each of the three methods above 

 named. 



Trenching is done with the spade. It con- 

 sists in first removing the earth from a trench 

 to the depth that it is proposed to work the 

 soil, the trench to be of any convenient width, 

 (say two feet wide,) and as long as the plot of 

 ground to be trenched. To be a little precise, 

 we will suppose the soil is to be trenched to the 

 usual depth of two feet : the trench will then 



