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AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
143 
but a few feet of land, will have grapes in abun¬ 
dance, while those who have 50 or 100 acres, or 
more, are without this welcome fruit. Why is this ? 
It certainly can not be the cost, for 25c. to 50c. is 
the average price of viues. We think it is from 
some feeling that vines are difficult to manage, that 
there is some “mystery” about pruning that they 
cannot master, that prevents the general planting 
of vines. Now we advise every one who has the 
land—and if that is but 10 feet square, it will hold 
several vines—every farmer, who would provide 
his family with this most acceptable fruit, and, we 
may add, would increase the attractions of home, 
to plant out grape vines. It must be a strange farm 
that can not find a place for them, as we have over 
50 vines in a space 200 x 100 feet, and all in full 
bearing. There is nothing about the vine, its train¬ 
ing and pruning, that any one can not understand. 
We head this article “ One Grape Vine,” because 
what may be done with one vine, may be done with 
five, or fifty, or more. The first question will be, 
What Kind. Shall I Plant ? 
As a general thing, if one knows nothing about 
vines, and is to put out but one, we say plant a 
“ Concord.” But we do not advise any one who 
has the room, to restrict himself to one, so we add 
as a list to choose from, Delaware, Creveling, Hart¬ 
ford Prolific, Barry, Wilder, Brighton, and Eumelan. 
Fig. 1.— VINE AS RECEIVED. 
These are all good, as family grapes, though not 
equally good market sorts, and are generally suc¬ 
cessful. Now, when you order a vine from a nursery, 
What do you Get ? 
If the nurseryman understands his business, you 
will get—not a big vine—but a copious root, with 
a stem having, perhaps, three or four buds upon it. 
When you get the vine or vines, make the soil mel¬ 
low—never mind manure now—open a broad hole, 
spread the roots, and cover them about 4 inches 
deep. But, before setting the vine, put down a 
stake, about 6 feet high, and plant the vine with 
the stem close to the stake. Spread the roots well, 
have them covered with the best of the top-soil, 
1 
Fig. 2.— PLANTING THE VINE. 
and when covered, press down firmly with the foot. 
Now, what have you got ? You have the roots well 
planted, and a dead-looking stem, with 3 or 4 
bunches along it, as in figure 1. These bunches on 
the stem are buds, and the growth of the vine will 
start from them. Watch them well. You will find, 
perhaps, that the uppermost swells and breaks first, 
then the next below will break, and after that the 
others. The first thing to do is to rub off all but the 
two best and strongest of the buds, and when the 
uppermost, or the next below it, has made a shoot 
long enough to tie to the stake, tie that to the stake 
with a piece of soft cotton twine, bass matting, or 
whatever will hold it without cutting. And then 
break off the other shoot—you will hate to do it, as 
it looks so promising, but the only way to start 
right, is to grow but one shoot the first year, and to 
keep that tied up to a stake as it grows. Certainly 
there is nothing difficult about this, and whoever 
does it, with one vine, or one hundred, will have 
made a fair start. Let the vine grow, keeping it 
tied up, and later, we will tell what to do with it. 
Where to Plant Vines. 
Anywhere, where there is six square feet of soil. 
They may be trained to special trellises, and this is 
necessary where there are many, but a vine may be 
trained to a fence, to the side of a shed, or a barn, 
or to the dwelling house. Once understand the 
manner of the growth of the vine, and it may be 
put almost anywhere.—How the vine grows, we 
shall try to show in other articles. In this we in¬ 
sist upon planting, at least one vine, but hope that 
those who have the room will plant many more, 
and we also insist that the vine shall be treated 
properly, and be allowed to form but a single shoot 
the first year. An old vine with several feet of stem 
and little root is not worth planting by any one. 
About Irrigating our Gardens. 
The sight of the wonders wrought by irrigation 
in Colorado and California, some years ago, stimu¬ 
lated me to try the experiment, on a small scale in 
a new garden, for the last two seasons. I came in¬ 
to possession of an old gravel pit, upon a side hill, 
covering about three-fourths of an acre. The soil 
in the highest part of the lot had been removed to 
the depth of twenty feet or more, some twenty years 
ago, for the purpose of making wharves in the vil¬ 
lage. Nothing was left but hard-pan and gravel. 
In the bank a spring had been struck, where the 
water oozed a little, all summer, and run a small 
stream during the winter. The surface soil below 
had never been planted, and bore nothing but 
coarse grasses and weeds. A part of it was deep 
mire in winter, and not dry enough to plow in 
spring until late in May. A more unpromising 
piece of land for a garden could hardly be found. 
Tiles were laid to the depth of three feet, com¬ 
pletely removing the surface water, and making 
early plowing practicable. Being without stable 
manure at the time, I used coarse sea-weed to turn 
under and loosen the soil, and applied a compost of 
fish-scrap and soil, in the hill. The yield of corn, 
potatoes, cabbages, and turnips, was much better 
than could have been expected. The soil improved 
every year, and the crops grew better. Two years 
ago I thought of turning the spring to practical 
account far irrigation. It had been previously 
cleaned out and deepened, and a pool about ten ft. 
square had been walled in, to furnish a small pond 
for ducks, and also to convey water to the hen¬ 
house. The waste-water, which would not more 
than fill a half inch pipe in summer, ran off into 
the tile-drains and benefited no one. On the dry- 
est part of the gravel bank below, squashes and 
melons were planted. A few troughs of hemlock 
slats were made, and the water was put on to the 
melon-patch early in July. After the vines were 
well started, the stream was kept in one place for a 
day or two, until the ground was thoroughly soaked, 
and then changed to other hills, until the whole 
patch had been irrigated. Although the soil was 
poor, and the only manure was that in the hill, the 
growth of vines was luxuriant, and there was a 
very fine crop of nutmeg and water-melons. Owing 
to the depredations of the bugs, the squashes did 
not succeed so well. Last summer the experiment 
was repeated with still better success. In hill- 
countries, like many parts of New England, there 
are thousands of places, where gardens and fields 
can be irrigated from surface streams, at very small 
cost, and thousands more, where wells and wind¬ 
mill pumps would make water available for the gar¬ 
den. We may safely calculate upon doubling our 
crops by the timely supply of water through the 
growing season. It would be a complete safeguard 
against drouth, and would be helpful every season. 
Water enables the plant to make the best use of 
the manure given it, and to get large supplies of 
food from the soil. Connecticut. 
TOE EKD1USEH0L©. 
tw For other Household Items see “ Basket ” pages . 
Home Topics. 
BY FAITH ROCHESTER. 
After the Kindergarten. 
Some good soul—a reader of this journal, I fancy 
—has sent me a few numbers of the new “ Primary 
Teacher.” In the second number is an article by 
Mrs. Hopkins, giving an account of one year of her 
teaching in a city of Massachusetts. I read this 
article with the greatest delight, and have re-read 
it about a dozen times. I want to copy every word 
of it here,but of course that would never do. Besides, 
I have become aware that this very article awakened 
quite varied sentiments in different readers. Colonel 
Higginson sent it to the “Women’s Journal,” 
recommending its perusal to teachers and mothers. 
This has called out some responses from teachers, 
who express themselves shocked by the amount of 
learning accomplished by Mrs. Hopkins’ pupils. 
Let me see if I can tell briefly some of the work 
done in her little private school of girls from eight 
to fourteen years of age. The only previous edu¬ 
cation of the younger ones had been a good Kinder¬ 
garten. They got quite a clear vision of the course 
of events in this country for 200 years past, from 
Higginson’s “Young Folks’History,” went through 
Dickens’ “ Child’s History of England,” and had 
the prominent points of Greek and Roman My¬ 
thology from reading “ The Age of Fable.” They 
reviewed Miss Hall’s “Primary Geography,” which 
had been read to them in the Kindergarten, then 
took the higher geography and went nearly through 
the geography of the United States. After some 
language lessons, they found to their joy that they 
knew grammar already, so they left that to take 
care of itself, and went on to dictation exercises and 
composition. Reading and spelling they learned 
by having constant exercises in one way or other. 
It was found necessary to restrain their excite¬ 
ment, somewhat, in the mental exercises of arith¬ 
metic, though they had frequent exercises, and be¬ 
came very quick and skillful in rapid calculation. 
They studied the fundamental rales, applying nu¬ 
meration to fractions, decimals, U. S. money, com¬ 
pound numbers, the metric system, etc. All these 
were treated as varied applications of the simple 
rules of numeration, addition, and subtraction. 
They learned also from Prof. Gray’s “ How Plants 
Grow,” and Miss Youman’s little Botany, (at least 
they learned on her plan), analyzing flowers readily, 
and enjoying much of the higher and more delight¬ 
ful developments of botany. They studied the 
forest trees by walks in the woods, and reference 
to Mr. Emerson’s book. They learned what Morse 
could tell them in his “First Book of Zoology,” Mrs. 
Agassiz in her little “ Sea-6hore Book,” and read 
together other books on land snails, butterflies, and 
other insects. They learned from books and pic¬ 
tures about our native birds. They had a teacher 
for drawing, and a French woman to talk French 
with them, learning by heart a few fables, and 
playing a French game with their teacher. They 
studied German in much the same way, reading 
at last with delight “ Grimm’s Tales ” in German. 
All this was done in one school year by children 
averaging ten years of age, though some had en¬ 
tered their teens. There was no constraint, no 
emulation, no rale of morals or manners, except 
such as they saw to be the necessary conditions of 
attentive study and good manners. Mrs. Hopkins 
hoped in the following year to advance her pupils 
as much in love of study, desire to learn, develop¬ 
ment of their faculties, and attainment of knowl¬ 
edge, as she felt had been done in the past year. 
Wliat is Said on the other Side. 
Those who criticise this article protest against 
such “ pouring into ” the minds of children, sug¬ 
gesting how difficult it is to battle with the natural 
tendency of such children to distraction and 
thought-wandering. They forget that the younger 
ones of Mrs. H.’s class were trained in a Kinder- 
