OPEN-AIR CULTURE. 



77 



In Australia, where extensive vineyards are being 

 planted on the Hunter Eiver and elsewhere, though 

 they have much to learn, they have nothing to unlearn, 

 like their brethren on the continent of Europe. James 

 Elliot Blake, Esq., of Tabelk Vineyard, Melbourne, 

 informed me recently that when they extend their 

 plantations they trench the soil, and then cut young 

 canes from the established vines 6 feet long, and run 

 one end of the cane 3 feet deep into the soil, and 

 that they make very little progress for two years. If, 

 instead of proceeding in this primitive way, they were 

 the previous year to make a long range of trenches, 

 sheltered round the sides by turf, over which during 

 cold or excessively hot weather some sort of cloth could 

 be run, they might strike plants from cuttings of two 

 eyes by the thousand, to be transplanted by having 

 their roots properly spread out in the soil as it is being 

 trenched ; such plants would come sooner into a bear- 

 ing state, and make better permanent vines than those 

 planted as at present. And when the great value of 

 the produce of a single acre of vineyard is considered, 

 no ordinary preliminary expense ought to be withheld 

 that would add to its productiveness. A gentleman, 

 who has vineyards in the neighbourhood of Sydney, 

 told me recently, that from one acre of vines he sells 

 £100 worth of grapes in the Sydney market annually, 

 and of those that are not fit for market he makes 

 twelve hundred gallons of wine that he can sell at 3s. 

 6d. per gallon. 



As a manure for vineyards nothing will prove so 

 permanently beneficial as broken bones. The green 

 prunings of the vines are also useful as a manure, and 

 should be forked or dug into the soil once a-year ; but 

 the roots of the vines should be disturbed as little as 



