Book I. 



GRAPE-VINE. 



757 



ter's frost, and repeatedly turning over. The dust and dirt of roads, Speechly greatly esteems as a manure 

 for vines ; its fertile nature he attributes, " in part, to the dung, urine, and other rich materials of which 

 it is composed ; and in part to a kind of magnetic power impressed upon it by friction, and its per^jetual 

 pulverisation," {Ti: on the Vine, p. 37.) Cow-dung is generally preferred for the vine in France; but the 

 vine-growers take every sort they can get: tlie more careful, however, form composts of earths, leaves, 

 weeds, cleanings of ditches, rivers, and ponds, which they turn over a year at least before using. In some 

 places, littery dung is buried in trenches between the rows; but in general, the dung, of whatever kind, is 

 spread on the surface, and regularly dug in. Green crops are sown and dug in in some places. {Cours. 

 Complete &c, art. Vigne.) Forsyth considers the best manure for vines to be a mixture of vegetable mould, 

 rotten spit-dung, and fresh loam ; these ingredients should be thrown into a heap, and frequently turned 

 a year or two before it is used. The vine is allowed by all gardeners to be a gross feeder ; the fertility of 

 both the Hampton Court and Valentine's vines are attributed to their roots having found their way, the 

 former into a large common sev, er, and the latter into a pond of stagnated muddy water. {Uort. Trans. 

 iii. 337.) Some vines in the hot-houses at Earl's Court produced abundance of blossoms the second year 

 from the eye, and the \ oung wood of the same vines the third year is now ^June 1. 1820.) throwing out 

 laterals with large bunches of flowers ; so that these vines the third year are producing two crops, one of 

 •which is now ripe and the other in blossom. The cause of this extraordinary fertility appears to be the 

 soil of the border, which is composed of equal [oarts of garden-earth and blood mixed together, and repeat- 

 edly turned over one year before using. 



4823. Vine-ivalls. A south wall is always to be preferred for vines ; though, in some 

 years, the hardier sorts may attain a tolerable degree of perfection on a wall considerably 

 inclined to the east or west. Vines, Speechly observes, do well on low walls six feet 

 high ; and it has been found that the plants grow stronger, and afford larger grapes when 

 they do not exceed four or five feet in height ; they enjoy in this way both the reflected 

 heat of the wall and of the earth. Flued walls have been tried for vines in some parts of 

 the north of England ; but Speechly, and English gardeners in general, do not approve 

 of the practice. In Scotland, though flued walls are more common and better under- 

 stood, yet vines are seldom planted in the open air. For standards or plantations in the 

 way of vineyards, Switzer recommends, "that side or declivity of a hill lying to the south 

 or south-east, which, if favored with other hills, somewhat higher, clothed with wood on 

 the north, north-east, and north-west, will break the severity of those perishing quarters." 

 Speechly concurs in this opinion, adding, that the hills in the counties bordering on the 

 English channel, have in general declivities tending to the south, and are, therefore, 

 highly favorable for vineyards. Steeps of poor gravelly and rocky soils, in warm situ- 

 ations, would produce more under vines than under any other crop. 



4824. Sorts far the open air. Some of these have been already enumerated. (4801.) And an addition 

 may be made from the hardy sorts described in the table. 



4§25. Planting. Where a wall is to be entirely covered with vines, three plants of a sort maybe planted 

 at the distance of three, or if a large-leaved kind, of four feet from each other ; the two outer plants to be 

 considered as temporary, to fill the wall and produce a supply of fruit ; and the centre plant to be con- 

 sidered as permanently to fill the space occupied by the other two. The temporary plants will, therefore, 

 be trained chiefly on the upper part of the wall, and the permanent ones below ; and in four or five years 

 the latter will be in a state to cover the wall, when the former may be rooted out. When vines are only 

 planted in the intervals between other fruit-trees, or on piers, to be trained within a narrow upright space, 

 then one plant to each is sufficient. Some however, as Forsyth, place two against a pier, one on each 

 side ; but this is more to obtain a variety of sorts than to fill the space. 



4826. In jJTuning and training in the open air, any of the modes described as appli- 

 cable to forced vines (2965.) may be adopted. As they break more regularly in the 

 open air than when forced, the spur-method f Jig. 455. ) and the fruit-tree method (Jig* 

 456.) seem to deserve the preference. 



4827- JVilliams, of Pitmaston, [Hort. Trans, iii. 250.) describes a mode of training so as to fiU up the va- 

 cancies of other fruit-trees, which seems well deserving attention. " A vine," he says, " might be 

 trained horizontally under the coping of a wall to a great distance, and by inverting the bearing shoots, 

 the spaces between the other fruit-trees and the top of the wall could readily be filled up, and if diflPerent 

 vines were inarched to the horizontal branch, the south wall of a large garden might be furnished with a 

 variety of sorts from the stem and root of a single plant, the roots of which would not encumber the 

 border in which the other fruit-trees were growing. I have an experiment of this kind noiv in progress 

 in my garden. Within a few years past, I have gradually trained bearing branches of a small black clus- 

 ter-grape to the distance of nearly fifty feet from the root, and I find the bunches every year grow larger, 

 and ripen earlier as the shoots continue to advance. According to Knight's theory of the circulation of 

 the sap, the ascendi-sig sap must necessarily become enriched by the nutritious particles it meets with in 

 its progress through the vessels of the alburnum ; the wood at the top of tall trees, therefore, becomes 

 short-jointed and full of blossom-buds, and the fruit there situated attains its greatest perfection. Hence 

 we find pine and fir trees loaded with the finest cones on the top boughs, the largest acorns grow on the 

 terminal branches of the oak, and the finest mast on the high boughs of the beech and chestnut ; so like- 

 wise apples, pears, cherries, &c. are always best flavored from the top of the tree. But I suppose there 

 are certain limits beyond which the sap would be so loaded with nutriment that it could not freely cir- 

 culate." 



4828. Training the shoots of vines along the ground like those of melons and cucumbers has been proposed 

 by Vispre (Dissert, on the Growth of Wine in Eng. Bath, 1786.), and was practised by him on a small scale 

 at Chelsea, xvhere " the grapes were considerably larger than those of the same kind growing on a south 

 wall, and well ripened." Bacon had before suggested this mode, from a report that "in some places 

 these vines are suffered to grow like herbs, spreading upon the ground, and the grapes of these vines are 

 very large, &c." It appears from Vispre, that the Rev. M. Le Brocq had taken out a patent for training 

 fruit-trees in this manner. Speechly says, " Fruit-trees of various sorts have been so trained at Welbeck 

 for fourteen years ;" and we have seen the practice adopted in the Earl of Selkirk's garden at St Mary's 

 Isle in Kircudbrightshire, above fifteen years ago. 



4829. Growing the vine on espaliers. This maybe done, following the same directions in all respects as 

 for walls ; but it is evident that, under such treatment, the fruit will not come to the same degree of ma- 

 turity as when enjoying the shelter and reflection of a compact screen. Where wine is made from green 

 grapes, as is now frequently done, the practice may be preferable to growing the vine as dwarf standards, 



48.30. Growing the vine as standards. This practice may be adopted either in the borders of gardens 

 or in extensive plantations as vineyards, and the plants may be trained either like red currants or rasp 

 i?crries. In the former case no stakes are used ; but about a foot from the ground, three or more shoots, 



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