78 
House b‘ Garden 
THE CHOICE and PRUNING of GRAPES 
Sectional Climates and Soils JFill Injliience the Choice 
of J^arieties and the Method of Cultivating ’Them 
SAMUEL FRASER 
O NE of the most interest¬ 
ing phases of human 
endeavor is contained in the 
story of the development of 
the grape. From time im¬ 
memorial wine has been the 
symbol of joy, and man’s 
wanderings after wine are the 
story of man’s life. When the 
English and other European 
nations came to this new 
world of ours they found 
grapes in abundance. Grapes 
covered the land. The Vik¬ 
ings called it Vineland al¬ 
though they probably saw 
little of the land south of 
New England, and the main 
effort of Europeans for nearly three 
centuries was to find grapes that 
would make wine. 
European and other grapes were 
brought here in profusion. They all 
endured our conditions for but a short 
time; then they dwindled and died. 
For two centuries this continued, and 
many wonderfully devised schemes 
for the development of a great wine 
industry in America came to naught. 
Tlie wrecks strew the whole of North¬ 
eastern America. Some seventy or 
eighty years ago it began to be real¬ 
ized that reliance must be placed on our 
native grapes and during that period 
we can see the rise and development of 
American grapes, but the great 
achievement is not that the grapes 
have been developed but that the 
public taste has been developed so 
that it now calls for grapes 
and not wine. Grapes to eat 
out of hand. 
After all the tragedy (and 
no other word describes the 
scenes), after all manner of 
vicissitudes, much loss, much 
suffering, it has been found 
that the reason why Euro¬ 
pean grapes failed in the 
East was, in part, winter 
injury, but it was mainly due 
to two diseases—black rot 
and mildew. These two dis¬ 
eases any school-boy may 
now control by spraying with 
Bordeaux mixture after the 
grapes go out to bloom, mak¬ 
ing three or four applications at 
intervals of about ten to fourteen days. 
The phylloxera is a small louse which 
lives on the roots of the grape, and 
while it lives on all, it saps the life out 
of the European grape, whereas our 
natives, especially the wild river-bank 
grape, Vitis riparia, are immune to its 
attacks. 
The great California grape indus¬ 
try (there are about 250,000,000 
grape vines in California, almost 
wholly European varieties, and 70% 
of the commercial grape acreage of 
the country) was made possible by 
planting cuttings of the wild river- 
bank grape and using these for the 
roots and then grafting the European 
grape on them. The phylloxera was 
introduced into Europe and now the 
{Continued on page 102 ) 
Cane pruning of European grapes in 
California gives the vine a goblet shape 
trained on one or two wires 
The Single Stem or Kniffcn System of pruning is 
used in eastern New York and along the north 
Atlantic seacoast. This style requires two wires 
» 
It 
The Chautauqua System is praeticed in Western and Ce7itral New York 
and is especially useful for strong growing varieties of the Lahrusa type. 
Photographed by the New York Agricultural Experiment Station 
The High Renewal System uses two or three wires, taking a set of laterals 
for each wire and pinching out any canes that project above the op. It 
is used for weak growing varieties such as Delaware and Catawba 
