210 TRANSACTIONS OF THE AMERICAN INSTITUTE. 



been very light and quality inferior. There is probably not half an ordi- 

 nary crop. This has been caused by the great drouth, by aphis -and mil- 

 dew, The aphis has affected the crop only during the last two years. It 

 is customary to manure the hop yard in the fall, by placing a shovel full 

 of good barnyard manure to each hill. This requires only four or five 

 stout loads per acre. Lime and ashes are also very beneficial, applied at 

 the rate of about one pint to the hill in the spring, which has a tendency tO" 

 prevent the work of the grubs. The best prevention of tbem which I have 

 found is to bury the surplus shoots which we trim off, as these serve as 

 food for the grubs, and while they remain fresh the grul>s feed upon them 

 in preference to the hard vines which are reserved to climb the polo. A 

 hop yard must be cultivated as carefully as a corn crop. Although Otsego 

 is the largest hop-growing county in this country, it is, as I said before, 

 not because best adapted to their culture, but because the first settlers 

 of that county found it too poor for wheat, too high and cold for corn, and 

 not very profitable for any other grain. They found the lands extremely 

 well adapted to dairy purposes, but they wanted son:ie other salable crop, 

 and they accidentally hit upon hops. I look upon it as about the poorest 

 county in the State for that crop, and I see no reason why the cheap landd 

 of Jersey, Delaware, Maryland and Virginia, may not be used for hop cul- 

 ture as well as Otsego. Hops do well in any g-ood limestone soil, and so 

 they do in any soil that will produce Indian corn, with about the same 

 amount of pi-eparation and cu'tivation, and with less manure. I believe 

 the only necessity for making new yards arises from the old English 

 method of growing hops which has been adopted in this country ; that is, 

 growing them upon long poles, which renders it necessary to take them 

 down when the crop is picked. Tliis is done by cutting off the vines and 

 drawing the poles out of the ground by a lever and dog which takes hold 

 of the pole, which is lifted up by one man while another takes it upon his 

 shoulder and carries to the picking boxes. Cutting the vines while in a 

 fresh growing state causes them to bleed as badly as grapevines cut dur- 

 ing the growing season. This sometimes so exhausts the vigor of the 

 roots that a considerable portion of them die during the winter, and they 

 are unproductive the next season. I saw this fully illustrated near 

 Cooperstown a few years since. A yard one year produced an extraordi- 

 narily heavy crop ; it was picked while the vines were still in a vigorous 

 growth, and they were observed to bleed profusely. The next year the 

 vines were weak, grew small, and produced very few hops. This was 

 charged to their over-bearing the year before. By a different plan of 

 treatment, I have repeatedly proved that Avhat is termed over-bearing 

 never produces this effect. I have adopted a new and very much improved 

 system, which obviates all necessity of cutting the vines until they are 

 entirely ripe. Indeed they may be cut any time during- the winter. This 

 improvement is in using poles only seven and eight feet high, with twines 

 drawn from the top of the poles in each direction across the field ; they 

 need to be only just high enoug-h to allow a horse and boy, if one is em- 

 ployed for a rider, to pass under the twines while cultivating the crop. 



By this system the yield is increased to 1,500 or 1,800 pounds per acre, 

 and the saving of expense in poling is very great, as not more than one- 



