62 KEEPING GRAPES AFTER THEY ARE RIPE. 



the grapes are thorouglily ripe, the night temperature 

 should be lowered to 50° till the leaves fall off or ripen, 

 when they should be removed carefully by hand from 

 the vines. After this date the fire-heat should never 

 exceed 45°, nor fall below 35° at night; and in damp 

 foggy weather I keep the house carefully shut up 

 for nights and days at a time. To give air during a 

 damp foggy day is to fill the house with the very 

 evil you wish to avoid — damp air. The surface of the 

 internal border is allowed to get perfectly dry, and to 

 remain so all winter, care being taken that as little 

 sweeping or raking take place as possible, for by this 

 means dust is raised, which settles on the bunches. 

 Half the roots are in the outside border, and had no 

 covering at all. 



Towards the close of February I cut about fifty 

 bunches of the Lady Downes, detaching the branch on 

 which the bunch grew, as when pruning the vine. I 

 then sharpened the ends of the branches, and run some 

 four or five of them with a bunch on each into the side 

 of a mangold-wurzel laid on the shelf of the fruit-room, 

 allowing the bunches to hang over the side of the shelf. 

 In this way the grapes kept perfectly fresh till April. 

 I left some fifteen bunches on one vine for experiment- 

 ing upon, two of which are still hanging at this date, 

 May 2. About the 15 th of April the sap began to rise 

 in the vines, and some of the berries that were a little 

 shrivelled suddenly got plump, while others that had 

 shown no signs of shrivelling burst their skins, and the 

 sap of the vine that had forced itself into them began 

 to drip from them. It was tinged with colouring matter 

 out of the berry, and had the taste of the berry. To 

 stop this bursting of the berries, I made an incision in 

 the lateral on which the bunch hung, betwixt it and the 



