THE GRAVE VINE.
I have not beon very successful (says Max Adeler in the Danbury News) with the experiments in grape culture. I bought a vine some time ago, and the man who sold the cutting to me enjoined me to be careful to water it thoroughly :every day. I did so, but it didn't seem to thrive. One day I asked my neighbour, Pitman, what he thought was the -matter with it, and when I mentioned that I watered it daily, he said—" My gracious, Adeler, that'd kill any, one ! A grape-vine don't want no artificial waterin'." Then he advised me to discontinue the process and to wash the vine with soap-suds iv order to kill the bugs. My anxiety to know why it still didn't thrive was relieved some time afterwards »y overhearing a man in the cars remark that " some men kill their grapeTines by their durned foolery in puttm soap-suds on 'em." He s*id all a grapetine wanted was to have the earth around it loosened now and then with a spade' Then I began to dig around my vine every morning, but one day, while engaged in the exercise, Cooley came and leaned over the fence and said— "Adeler, you'll kill that there vine if you don't stop diggin' at it. Nothin' hurts a vine wuss than disturbin' the sod around the roots, now mind me. That tine don't want nothin' but to be trained upon a trellis, and fastened with wire." I ordered a trellis/that afternoon, and tied tender shoots of the vine to the cross ■pieces. The job cost me 34d01. On # the following Tuesday I read in my agricultural paper that if a man wanted to ruin his grape-vinethequickest way wa* to tie it up with wire, as the oxydisation destroyed the bark. So I took off the wire, and replaced it with string. I wa* talking about it to the man who came over to bleed my horse for the blind staggers, and he assured me that there was only one sure way to make a grape-vine utterly worthless, and that was to run it up on a trellis. In France, he told me, the vine-yard-owners trained their vines on poles, and that was the right way. So I got the axe and knocked the.trellis to pieces, and then fixed the vine to a bean-pole. Still it did not thrive very well, and I asked a nurseryman near me to come and look at it. He said he couldn't'come, but he knew what was the matter with the vine as well as if he saw it.^ It wanted pruning. I ought to cut it down to within 10ft. of the roots, and then manure it well. I did cut it down, and emptied a bag of over it; but as it seemed sort of slow, I insisted on the nurseryman coming over to examine it. He said that his fee was lOdollars in advance. I paid ■ him, and he came. He looked at the; Tine a moment; then he smiled; and then he said, " By gosh, Adeler, that isn't a grape-vine at all' It's a. Virginia creeper." So I have kind of knocked off on grape-culture, and am paying more attention to my cabbage.
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Thames Star, Volume VII, Issue 1945, 30 March 1875, Page 4
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543THE GRAVE VINE. Thames Star, Volume VII, Issue 1945, 30 March 1875, Page 4
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