Can Grapes be Successfully Grown in Florida? 
H. T. Fisher, Eustis 
Can grapes be successfully grown in 
Florida? This question continues to lie 
across the threshold of the grape industry 
and is waiting for a convincing affirma¬ 
tive answer before the industry can enter 
upon the large development of which the 
climate, the soil, the seasons, and other 
natural conditions peculiar to Florida give 
such abundant assurance and which is be¬ 
lieved to be already answered by the un¬ 
failing success of hundreds of growers in 
different parts of the State, and particu¬ 
larly in the portion of which Lakeland 
may be regarded as the center. 
It seems not to be generally known that 
in the past five or six years a new era in 
grape growing has quietly come to Flori¬ 
da, and is vindicating its right to live and 
develop by every test and demonstration 
that the most exacting specialist might 
require except, possibly, in the single fac¬ 
tor of time, but even as to this, the age to 
which these vineyards may survive and 
yield their fruit, there should be no hesi¬ 
tancy because there are many individual 
instances wherein substantially the same 
methods of propagation and cultivation 
that characterize the larger development 
of grapes today, have been practiced for 
years, and which are and have been in a 
highly productive state continuously from 
the beginning. An example of this kind 
is found in my own town of Eustis, where 
an English gardener named Masters, some 
twenty years ago, pollenized a wild grape 
with Concord pollen, and produced a very 
choice bunch grape. About twelve years 
ago, Mr. Frank W. Savage, the superin¬ 
tendent of the Government Station at Eus¬ 
tis, in crop physiology and breeding in¬ 
vestigations, grafted a cutting from this 
vine on a rooted growing cutting of a wild 
grape, and in about eighteen months 
thereafter he sold a hundred pounds of 
choice fruit from this single vine, in the 
local market. This vine has yielded a full 
crop every year since and has never been 
fertilized nor sprayed, nor received any 
attention except close pruning during the 
dormant season, and is growing in the up¬ 
land, yellow sandy soil common about 
Eustis. Many vines have been grown by 
neighbors from the Savage vine with like 
success and fruitage. 
The analogy to the genesis of the 
adapted grape which we are exclusively 
planting in our vineyards today is obvious 
because these new grapes also are builded 
on the sure foundation of one or another 
of the several species of wild grapes which 
have grown everywhere in Florida time 
without mind, and, like the Masters and 
Savage grape, are hybrids, obtained by 
pollenizing a domestic bunch grape on a 
