104 PICTORIAL rilAUTWAL FBUIT OliOWINQ. 



Give plenty of water and a weekly soaking o£ liquid manure during the 

 growing season, and the Vines will improve. 



Keeping Grapes. — Grapes may be kept for many weeks, and even 

 months, if the bunches are cut with a piece of lateral, and this is inserted 

 in a wide-necked bottle full of water. The bottles should be fixed in a 

 sloping position, so that the Grapes hang clear. They must be placed in a 

 cool place where the air is pure and sweet. 



Shanking', — There are plenty of Grape growers who are devoutly thank- 

 ful that their experience of shanking is limited to seeing it in the vineries of 

 their acquaintances. They can tolerate it there with some amount of com- 

 placency as a rule. Now shanking is essentially a preventible complaint, 

 but this information only conveys cold comfort to those who have inherited 

 a legacy of it from some other grower, who might have brought preventive 

 measures into play but did not do so. Those people, now on the eve of 

 commencing Grape culture, who follow out to the letter the instructions 

 which have been given in other pages, will certainly not have shanked 

 Grapes, but I cannot ensure the same immunity for those luckless beings 

 who take premises on which the Vines are of hoary antiquity, have been 

 atrociously overcropped, and have sent roots far away into some bad soil. 

 Slianking, or shrivelling of the footstalk of the berries, may arise from many 

 causes. Even young and healthy Vines will sometimes show it. I have seen 

 a bad attack of it in the vineries of a grower who boasted his scores of prizes 

 for Grapes, and yet was so overcome by instincts of greed as to mercilessly 

 overload hisVines. I have seen it in an amateur's conservatory, where the 

 roots of the Vines were confined in a small border that had been allowed to 

 get dust dry. And, needless to say, I have §een an unlimited amount of it 

 in old houses where the roots have got beyond the grower's control. It will 

 be seen from the foregoing that to puf an abstract query about the cause of, 

 and remedy for, shanking is not enou^ to draw a wary expert. He wants to 

 know, you know. He is circumlooutoi^ from sheer force of circumstances. 

 He responds with a series of carefully worded inquiries before committing 

 himself. The remedies for overcropping and drought are obvious to the 

 meanest intelligence. Tlie runaway roots cause is a tougher one to deal 

 with. There is notliing for it but to investigate. Remove the soil from the 

 border so as to bare the largest roots, and then endeavour to trace them. If 

 they cannot be run down, and there is real room to suspect that they have 

 got into bad company, sever them and lift the loose ends nearer to the 

 surface, where there is fresh, sweet soil. This may be done when the leaves 

 change colour in the autumn. There is no need to wait until they are all 

 down. By remaking the border and working up new rods, old, shanky 

 Vines may often be led into ways of righteousness. 



Mealy Bug, Red Spider, Scale, and Thrips. See pages 78 and 79. 



Grapes in Frames or Ground Vineries.— I have seen 

 some very successful, and some very disastrous, attempts to grow 

 good crops of Grapes in what are termed ground vineries. In the one 

 case healthy growth and excellent bunches rewarded the efforts of the 

 grower ; in the other puny shoots, rusty with the work of red spider, and 

 spindly bunches without size, colour, or flavour, were in evidence. It is 

 plain as daylight that something besides the inherent capacity of the Vine 

 to accommodate itself to a lowly home must account for this contradic- 

 tion, and the causes of failure were not, as a rule, very far to seek. Tliey 

 might be enumerated as follow :' (1) unsuitable varieties, (2) bad planting, 



