294 
JOURNAL OF HORTICULTURE AND COTTAGE GARDENER. 
April 4,1895. 
MODERN GRAPE GROWING. 
The Boeder. 
{^Continued from -page 252.) 
The principal objects of a Vine border are to protect and keep the 
roots in position, and to afford a suitable medium for conveying food 
to the root hairs. The chemical constituents of the soil are of minor 
consequence compared with its physical condition. You may have a 
soil with the dozen or more elements and compounds essential to the 
Vine’s prosperity, so beautifully balanced that nothing more could be 
desired in that way, and yet it may be comparatively sterile. 
On the other hand, if you possess a soil which is physically right 
and contains nothing obnoxious, it is an easy matter to make it fertile 
and to keep it so. Whatever soil the Vine may succeed in abroad— 
and I am told it often flourishes well where there is hardly any soil 
at all—experience teaches us that there is nothing suits our purpose so 
well as a rather heavy loam, that is a soil containing not less than 
30 per cent, of clay in almost invisible particles. 
Do not let it be thought from this that I disparage the work of 
chemists, far from it. There is nothing I devour more greedily than 
records of experiments made by such men as Messrs. Lawes and 
Gilbert, and certainly any honours that can be bestowed on the world’s 
benefactors ought to be theirs. But if anyone thinks that by paying a 
few shillings for an analysis of his soil at the viDace laboratory, even 
if the presiding genius should be a Davy or a Voelcker, his fruit¬ 
growing is going to be made a matter of rule and thumb, he will find 
himself woefully mistaken. Analysing a soil is not such an easy matter 
as it appears to the uninitiated. It requires a good many delicate 
operations if it is to be done thoroughly ; and after all, though the 
ingredients may be there which would render the soil a fertile one 
so long as it was a ploughed field, a Vine border has the dis¬ 
advantage of being very much shut off from the beneficial action of 
frosts and winds, sunshine and showers, and must to a great extent be 
dependent on the cultivator. 
Analysing manures is by comparison an easy matter, because every¬ 
one who has learned the rudiments of agricultural chemistry knows 
what they should contain, and thanks to our legislators no one need 
now buy quack mixtures, though they do buy them and will continue 
to do so. Those having a good soil to deal with, and abundance of 
energy in themselves, may succeed in spite of the quackery, in the 
same way that people having a good constitution, make their supper, 
when they have fancied ailments, off Mrs. Swindle’s tincture of soap 
bubbles, and still live. Of course, the tincture gets the credit of saving 
their valuable lives for the benefit of humanity at large, and Mrs. 
Swindle is immortalised. 
Sometimes it is difficult to secure a soil that is physically correct, 
and then recourse must be had to mixing. There is no doubt a natural 
soil is best if you can get it in proper form, but clay can be dried and 
beaten into powder so that it shall appear almost like a part of the 
natural soil itself. On the other hand, if a soil contains too much clay 
and too little sand, there are many other gritty substances to choose from 
which will be better than sand for mixing, such as mortar from old build¬ 
ings or burned clay. If a soil does not contain sufficient clay it is not 
holding, water passes through it too freely, and remember that every 
time you water a light, loose soil you wash something out of it. 
Also it is not retentive of manure. If you use a chemical fertiliser 
you apply so much to the square yard according to the printed directions 
received from the vendor, a small part of which goes to the plants 
and a large portion to the drains. The worst of it is you have no means 
of knowing how much is retained by the soil, whether too much or too 
little. Again, what is called a light soil, if it is sandy, gives a great 
portion of its moisture to the air in the way of evaporation. A soil 
which is too heavy also has its drawback?. It may hold the water too 
long, and not be sufficiently porous to admit air, consequently it will 
become sour, so that no roots can grow in it, or, if they manage to do 
BO, will not ripen, and the leaves soon find this out. 
It has been my lot to have the two extremes to deal with in the 
matter of soils. In the kitchen garden at Longleat the soil is so stiff that 
if worked at all when wet it is injured for years after. One portion, 
about twenty-eight years ago, had some of the subsoil taken out and 
burned on it by one of my predecessors. The ground, I have been told, 
was wet at the time, and the axles of the barrow wheels ran uncom¬ 
fortably close to the soil. Of course the burned material was placed 
on the top and dug in, but the ground had not recovered when 1 last 
saw it, and probably has not done so now, although I made a practice 
of keeping a fire going the greater part of every winter outside the 
garden, burning refuse and clay, and this particular patch must have 
had at least 4 inches of such material put on it during my superin¬ 
tendence. Such ground when well managed grows enormous crops of 
fplendid quality in a season that is not too wet, but it requires a great 
deal of humouring. 
Now, in this neighbourhood it is altogether different. I see men 
working the ground immediately after and indeed during heavy rain, 
and this does not seem to hurt it at all. I have seen the best of farmyard 
manure placed 8 or 9 inches deep over it, and buried with great difficulty 
by a man with a spade. Very good Mangold was grown on it, but it would 
want manuring again the following season. Where grass is grown there 
is very little of what can be called soil before we come to a yellowish 
sandy material, loose at first, but a little deeper it takes out and looks like 
clay. It crumbles when exposed to the air, and its capacity for 
absorbing and disposing of vegetable manure is something marvellous. 
Going deeper we find some clay mixed with the sand, and at 8 or 
10 feet come on a very soft bluish clay, and this when dried and pul¬ 
verised, by the action of frost preferably, or pounded, is what we use 
principally to mix with our Vine soil. 
If a soil that is neither too heavy nor too light can be obtained with 
the turf on it, all well and good. If not we can do without the turf, and 
when necessary alter the material to make it of the right density. 
It is an advantage to have at least a little turfy soil to start the Vines 
in, but there is no particular need for a large amount of fibry turf ; 
indeed it is apt to make the border too rich in nitrogen, causing at the 
first rampant growth and large pith. The pith, I believe, is what you 
make it at first, it never enlarges. The part it plays in the plant’s 
economy is, so far as I am aware, not well understood, but no one likes 
to see too much pith. 
When one is starting Vine-growing in a new place where the soil and 
surroundings are strange, it is advisable to begin cautiously, for even 
after a life’s experience one is easily out of his reckoning. I would 
recommend starting with perfect drainage and narrow borders, say 
4 or 5 feet in width, and then feel one’s way during the next year or 
two.—W m. Taylor. 
(To be continued.) 
THE LATE MR THOMAS BAINES. 
Miss Baines favours us with an excellent portrait of her late 
widely known and much-respected father. It will be recognised by 
many of our readers as a life-like delineation of the famous plant 
grower, gardener, and judge, while those who may not have had the 
privilege of knowing Mr. Baines will be pleased to see what manner 
of man he was as he went about so actively from show to show 
in his latter years, and from garden to garden in the course of 
his landscape work. The portrait is taken from an oil painting by 
Mr. C. F. Lowcock, who has been very successful in producing a 
characteristic likeness of Mr. Baines, who was a man of mark in the 
gardening world in which he worked so long and so well. 
THE LONG FROST AND INSECTS. 
Some of my friends, while emphatic in their complaints as to the 
damage caused by the long frost to many plants and shrubs, are rather 
jubilant over the supposed effects it has had upon insect life. It must 
have killed many, they say, above ground and beneath. I have felt 
myself obliged to discourage them a little by telling them we do not 
know just yet ; we are unable to judge of its results till the world of 
insects are once more aroused by the influences of spring. The observa¬ 
tions of entomologists on the insect tribes generally tend to the conclu¬ 
sion that the hybernating species can stand severe cold better than mild 
and moist weather. Certain it is that no amount of cold would injure 
insects’ eggs, nor affect to any great extent such moths and beetles as 
live in their perfect stage from the winter to spring; About those in the 
pupal or chrysalis stage there may be more doubt. The species that are 
usually exposed to all the weather of winter are so seasoned to it, I should 
say, that a prolongation of frost, or some degrees of extra intensity, 
would not be likely to touch them. We shall soon be able to ascertain 
whether the two common white butterflies (Pieris Brassiem and Kapae) 
which emerge in April to deposit eggs about gardens have had their 
numbers diminished by death of pupae. 
Amongst the Noctua group of fat-bodied moths we have several 
destructive species which pass the winter as pupae under the soil, but 
not buried at any great depth. A familiar example is the too abundant 
Cabbage moth—Mamestra Brassiem Possibly some of these have been 
killed by sudden change of temperature in this way. On two or three 
days in February the sun shone brightly, melting a layer of snow, the 
warm fluid then partly entering the earth ; but after sunset the tempera¬ 
ture fell rapidly, and a sheet of ice formed that would freeze up pupae 
near the surface which had been previously thawed by the sun. But 
there is this to be considered also—that many birds during the winter 
seek out and eat pupae, which by the long frost obtained protection from 
their enemies, the ground resisting the birds’ bills and feet. Mild winters 
are helpful to the birds hunting, not only pupae but ether subterranean 
insects, and when the mildness is accompanied, as it often is, by heavy 
rainfalls, that destroys hybernating species by inducing a sort of disease, 
attended by fungoid growth on the skin. 
Gardeners, I know, generally suppose that a cold winter lessens their 
insect enemies next season. This does not seem to be the case, taking 
the majority of species, but rather the reverse. Still, the early months 
of 1805 were exceptional, owing to the severity of the frost, and its 
prolongation towards the spring, though it is the fact that caterpillars 
may be so congealed as to chink like stones if shaken in a box, and after¬ 
wards recover. Some, of course, could not endure such intense cold. 
Then, again, we must remember that instinct guides many caterpillars 
to descend deeper into the earth when frost is approaching, wherein 
they have much the advantage of our water pipes. Whether any of 
the caterpillars that pass the winter in a silken abode—the brown-tail, 
for instance—would strengthen its walls during sharp frost, if awake 
enough to do so, we cannot tell. Amongst the feeders upon wood, our 
persistent enemy, the goat caterpillar, destroyer of many ornamental 
and also some fruit trees, prepares for itself a warm retreat, well lined 
