The Grape In The Garden— By e. p. Powell, ; 



York 

 and Florida 



PLANT A FEW "GRAPE VINES ON BUILDINGS AND FENCES OR TO FILL OUT THE 

 WILD CORNERS — A CROP THAT GIVES SURE RETURNS FOR A MINIMUM OF WORK 



EXT to 



the apple 

 and straw- 

 berry the 

 grape is the most import- 

 ant fruit for the home gardener. He can 

 grow more of it, with less trouble than 

 any other fruit. Indeed, a good many 

 people get their supply in spite of their 

 negligence. If an old Concord gets well 

 rooted near a spruce, or a hemlock, it is 

 sure to run all over it; and in the fall the 

 branches hang with bushels of grapes. 

 This wild plan can be adopted if the gar- 

 dener thinks he has no time for anything 

 better. He will be sure to find a few 

 rooted branches around his old vine that 

 he can transplant to make other natural 

 arbors. A Concord will run twenty feet 

 or more on an old rail fence, and will coyer 

 a stone heap as cheerfully as it will a stone 

 fence. 



But why not look at this matter from an 

 economical standpoint, and consider how 

 many pounds of beefsteak can -be saved 

 by having a liberal supply of grapes from 

 the middle of August to the middle of Janu- 

 ary. I grow more than one hundred sorts, 

 not altogether for the grapes, but largely 

 for the pleasure of testing varieties. One 

 half of these are seedlings. I do not cross- 

 breed with care, but give a quarter acre to 

 seedlings, that come up every spring where 

 the house refuse is washed out. Planted 

 four feet apart, in rows five feet apart, 

 you can test a very large number of new 

 grapes in a very short time. The third 

 year ought to put a large part of these into 

 bearing, and all you want at first is a 

 bunch or two for trial. As fast as you 

 have made the test, either label the grape 

 with a bit of zinc, or dig it out. If worth 

 keeping, give it a number just now; and 

 after two or three years' trial, if it stands 

 well, give it also a name. 



Choice varieties are often secured in 

 this way, and do not cost much labor or 

 care. It is a good thing to turn over a job 

 of this sort to one of your daughters; it 

 becomes a much more fascinating study 

 than anything she is likely to have re- 

 quired of her in the public schools. I 

 find that every member of my family likes 

 not only grapes, but the study of grapes. 

 In our very small vineyard of fifty or sixty 

 sorts (the first one planted), we have al- 

 ready half a dozen that we would not part 

 with. 



However, if you cannot go into this sort 

 of work, you can plant half a dozen strong 

 grape vines on a trellis or around your barn 

 and train them to wires, stapled horizon- 

 tally about the building. Your vines will 

 cost you about twenty-five cents apiece, 

 and your stapling and wiring will take not 

 more than two hours of time, with a trifling 

 cost. For a barn I would select Worden 



Delaware is adapted to the warmer regions. It is not 

 always quite hardy in the colder regions of the North 



and Brighton planted near each other; with 

 Niagara and Lindley (also planted near 

 each other). Lindley and Brighton will 

 neither produce perfect crops unless 

 planted near other sorts. Another splen- 

 did couple would be Diamond and Her- 

 bert, two of our best keepers. 



For your house select half a dozen places 

 where a vine can be crowded in, so that it 

 can run over your balconies and porches. 

 Wire your house, if you will, as I advised 

 for the barn. These vines running all 

 over your building, will keep it cooler in 

 summer; and do no damage whatever in 

 the way of dampening the rooms inside, or 

 marring the paint. On my house I am 

 growing Gaertner, Goethe and Iona. 

 This Iona, all in all, is the most delicious 



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Improve the quality of your grapes by tying each bunch 

 in a paper bag 



179 



grape that is yet 

 known for out- 

 door culture. It 

 . needs to be laid 

 ^0 down in the win- 

 ter in the North and for that 

 reason I hesitate to recommend 

 it to the hard worked man. 



If you think you can afford a quarter 

 of an acre for vine culture, and have 

 a market for the surplus that you will 

 not consume, take for your six sorts 

 Worden and Moore, black; Brighton and 

 Gaertner for red; and for white, Diamond 

 and Niagara. This is by no means a sat- 

 isfactory list to an old grape grower like 

 myself. It leaves out a lot of pets, but it 

 puts in six sorts easily managed, and al- 

 most certain to give a fine crop, with ordi- 

 nary trimming and training. If you can 

 make space for more vines, try King for 

 black, Agawam and Lindley for red; and 

 Pocklington for white, although Pockling- 

 ton requires a season running to the middle 

 of October. Vergennes is another really 

 good red grape; while Campbell's Early is 

 a very fine black one, and Green Moun- 

 tain is an extra early white grape of good 

 quality. Where your season is short use 

 Worden freely with Moore's Early. 



You will notify me probably that I have 

 not mentioned the Delaware, and that I 

 have been neglectful of the democracy of 

 the Concord. This is simply because the 

 Delaware is a fragile and tender grower, 

 and will do nothing of value where some 

 of the other grapes, like Worden, will carry 

 all before them. The Concord I recall 

 as the one grape for everybody who will 

 neglect, or has no time to attend to his 

 vines. 



The simplest and cheapest way of 

 growing and training a little vineyard is 

 to set strong posts at the ends of the rows, 

 with somewhat lighter posts every twenty 

 feet in the rows. These should stand about 

 eight feet from the ground up ; and to them 

 should be stapled three or four wires. To 

 these wires tie the arms of your vines. The 

 vineyard will need going over and tying 

 three or four times during the early sum- 

 mer. About the first of November I cut 

 the cords, and after trimming back the 

 growing vines, quite liberally, lay them to 

 the ground. All the varieties I have named 

 will endure zero weather, if loosened in 

 this way from the trellis. More tender 

 sorts like Iona and Duchess must be cov- 

 ered with autumn leaves held down by 

 brush. Lift your vines in the spring, 

 and retie them to your wires. 



You note that I have given you no 

 special rules for trimming, and really 

 none are needed except those which are 

 needed by common sense, remembering 

 that the fruit is produced on one-year 

 old wood only — that is, the cane made 



