1869.] 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
179 
point of the spade down toward /, when the 
handle should be raised to c; thus a space is left 
behind the spade large enough for the set to be 
put iu quickly, and without danger of breaking 
off the fibrous or branching roots, or of draw- 
ing the plant out with the spade, as often hap- 
pens without this preparation. It is but the 
work of an instant, and is a great saving of 
time in the end. By working forward instead 
of backward, the 'tramping' is all done as 
the men pass along performing their work." 
A Bracket for Garden Purposes. 
Many have doubtless been puzzled how to 
manage when they wished to train a vine or 
climber to the house or fence. To fasten the 
plant directly to the building is not 
good for either, and to make a pro- 
jecting lattice that shall be both strong 
and neat is troublesome. Mr. C. 
Marvin, Port Jervis, N. Y., sends us a 
sample of a bracket which he has 
found useful to support horizontal 
slats to which plants may be trained. 
"With a few brackets, and slats, and 
some wires, the object may be accomplished 
neatly and efficiently. Mr. M. saj - s: "I cut 
the pattern of the bracket (fig. 1) for the mould- 
er, and he cast, drilled, and coaled them at the 
small sum of six cents each. The time and 
trouble of putting up is trifling. The first two 
brackets I screw on the house eight feet apart, 
the third one seven feet, nine inches, (to allow 
for the lapping of the slats); the pine slat, which 
slips into the bracket, is one inch thick, by two 
Fig. 2. — BRACKETS AND SLAT. 
inches wide, and sixteeu feet long; the ends of 
the slats I cut wedge-shaped where they are to 
be joined, and make the lap inside of the bracket, 
which holds the ends securely, and gives the ap- 
pearance of one continuous slat, as shown in fig. 
2." The length of the bracket is 5'|, inches; it is 
covered with a black varnish, to prevent rusting. 
A Bit of Rock-work. 
Artificial rock-work is generally out of place 
and out of taste. If rock-work can be intro- 
duced where such a formation might naturally 
be expected, the effect is pleasing; but a mass of 
stones built up on a lawn is seldom anything 
but a rubbish heap. Others differ in opinion, 
but we, nevertheless, express our own. The 
writer, in preparing a piece of ground for a flow- 
er border, discovered a most disagreeable geo- 
logical fact in the shape of a large rock, too 
near the surface for anything to grow above it; 
digging was impracticable, as it was an outcrop 
of the general underpinning, and blasting could 
not be resorted to for fear of injury to estab- 
lished plants. The remedy was — more rocks; 
as nature had determined that a rock should be 
just there, we determined to help her, and made 
a pile of rocks which is called a rock-work, 
though the principal care was devoted to mak- 
ing it strong, and securing a plenty of cavities 
or " pockets" for soil. It is not a very artistic 
heap of rocks and soil, but it affords more pleas- 
ure than it' the space were a nice deep border. 
The very top is crowned with the Alpine Rock- 
Crees, which was described last mouth. From a 
shelf, a little lower down, a Money-wort hangs 
its slender brandies ; on the other side, the 
Linaria Cymbalaria flourishes finely. Our 
graceful native Columbine has a nook, House- 
leeks, Stone-crops, Prickly Pears, and many 
other things, find a foothold here and there, 
and over all aplenty of European Ivy spreads 
its dark green foliage. To enliven the whole, 
when warm weather comes, some Portulaccas 
and dwarf Nasturtiums are put with the rest, 
and their flowers blaze away more brilliantly 
than they would in a more promising spot. All 
the " ribbon" borders and beds that were ever 
planted would not be accepted in exchange for 
this rude little bit of rocks. Now, while this 
rock- work was made in a border from sheer ne- 
cessity, we do not advise our readers to follow 
the example unless under similar circumstances, 
but if there are nooks and corners in their 
grounds where rocks will not appear out of place, 
they will find that many plants will seem to 
flourish better, or, at any rate, show to better 
advantage, on a rock-work than elsewhere. In 
building up, use stones that are all alike, and lay 
them as naturally as possible, taking care to 
have a sufficient number of pockets or cavities 
to hold the soil necessary to sustain the plants. 
Grape Trellises. 
For gardens and small vineyards there is 
nothing in the way of a trellis so neat and con- 
venient as the one proposed by Mr. Fuller in 
his Grape Culturist, in which upright wires are 
stretched from an upper to a lower bar, nailed 
to posts at the desired distance apart. This 
trellis we have already figured. In large vine- 
yards, where there must he the greatest econo- 
my of labor, horizontal wires are adopted. The 
only advantage they have over the upright ones 
is the cheapness with which they can be put 
up. The wires are stretched between strong 
posts at the ends of the rows of the vineyard, 
and supported at intervals by stakes. It will be 
seen that the two principal difficulties in putting 
up a trellis are, to properly stretch the wires at 
the time of putting them up, and to avoid the 
troubles that must result from the effects of 
heat and cold. If the wires are put up in spring 
and tightly stretched, the contraction caused by 
the cold in winter will either break them or 
pull the post out of the perpendicular. Several 
contrivances have been proposed for overcom- 
ing the difficulties of expansion and contraction. 
Before alluding to 
these we will give 
the plan of trellising 
adopted at Ham- 
mondsport, N. Y., 
which is both simple 
and efficient. The end 
posts of the rows are 
s braced as shown in 
§ fig. 1, the upper end 
=5§2 f the brace resting in 
a notch in the post, and 
Fig. 1,-post and brace, fo lower em , agahist a 
stone buried for the purpose. The coils of wire 
are placed upon a reel, fig. 2, which revolves on 
an upright axis fixed to a small bench. The 
coils are dropped upon the reel and kept sepa- 
rate by means of sticks, which are passed 
through holes made in the reel. The reel being 
placed at one end of the row, a man takes the 
ends of tiie three wires and walks towards the 
other end, where he makes them fast to the post 
at the proper distances, by a turn around the 
post, and a twisting of the end of the wire upon 
itself. The man at the reel cuts the wire at tho 
proper length, passes the end of it through an 
Fig. 2.— KEEL FOB WIRE. 
auger hole in the post, and begins to stretch. 
The stretching is done by means of a small 
windlass, a stick of hard wood about two feet 
long, with a small hole in the center, and arms 
at each end, fig. 3. The end of the wire which 
conies through the hole 
in the post is put through 
the hole in the windlass; 
on turning the windlass 
by the arms, its body 
resting against the post, 
the slack of the wire 
is taken up. The man 
who has carried out the wires, on his way 
back, sees that all is right, and when they are 
sufficiently stretched, he drives a strong, wooden 
pin in the hole through which the wire passe?, 
and, for additional security, a turn or two may 
be taken around the projecting end of the pin, 
The trouble from contraction by cold is avoided 
Fig. 4. — levuisson's stretcher. 
by the very simple expedient of knocking away 
the brace, and allowing the posts to yield to the 
tension. This rather rough method of over- 
coming all trouble from contract ion of the wires 
has been found perfectly practicable at Ham- 
mondsport, on thousands of acres. — The French 
have several more or less complicated raidisseurs 
for accomplishing the same end. One of these 
is a small windlass to be turned by a key, and 
which is held from turning back by a catch 
which falls into a ratch-wheel. One of these is 
attached to each wire. A lever attachment to 
the wires has been patented, as noticed in the 
" basket," by Mr. T. G. Younians. One of the 
NATURAL Sl'RETlUEl!. 
simplest tiling, of this kind we have seen is 
that proposed by M. Leyrisson, and figured in 
the Revue Horticole. The shape of the appa- 
ratus is shown in fig. 4 ; it consists of a curved 
piece of wood with a strong pin inserted in 
it. Near the pin a nail is driven. It will be 
seen that by catching the wire between the pin 
and nail, and turning, the wire will be -wound 
upon the pin. When the wire is sufficiently 
stretched, the long arm is caught in a wire or 
willow ring which slides upon the horizontal 
wire. In fig. 5, one of our associates shows how 
raidisseurs, or stretchers, can be cut ready form- 
ed, and without the trouble of inserting a pin 
