Grape

a tendril-bearing, climbing vine. The grape of history is the wine grape of the Old World, native, it is thought, to Asia. The sour grapes that Aesop's fox failed to reach were, no doubt, of this sort. Grapes are raised in Europe, mainly for wine and raisins; in the United States, chiefly for table uses. The grape was, no doubt, the first fruit brought under cultivation. It has a wide range. In the southern hemisphere, grapes thrive and are raised in quantities in Peru, Cape Colony, and New South Wales. Algeria sends France $16,000,000 worth of grape products each year. In France vineyards follow wheat and oats in acreage. In Spain, the acreage of grapevines is surpassed by that of wheat only. The same statement is true of Italy with 8,500,000 acres in grapes. In fact, grape growing is a leading industry in all the Mediterranean countries.

Grape growing in the United States was first tried with the European wine grape, without success. Mildew and a small insect called phylloxera (fil-lox-e-ra) proved such determined enemies that the attention of Americans was turned to our native grapes, of which the United States has at least two dozen kinds. By improving the Northern fox grape, gardeners have obtained the Isabella, the Concord, the Catawba, and most of our cultivated varieties. From the Southern fox grape, or muscadine, we have the Scuppernong. The Delaware grape is considered a hybrid.

The chief three regions of grape culture in the northeastern fourth of the United States are the lower part of the Hudson Valley, the region of lakes in northwestern New York, where the "Five Nations" used to live, and the Lake Erie region of New York, Pennsylvania, and Ohio. The valley of the Ohio is also an important grape region. California raises the wine grape. Grapes are raised in nearly every state of the Union.

Formerly the moist atmosphere of a lake shore or a river bank was thought necessary for grape culture, but experience has shown that these localities are favored by freedom from late and early frosts, rather than by any special quality of water or air. With proper care, grapes grow in soil varying from gravelly sand to a stiff heavy clay, and in almost any locality where the season permits dent corn to mature. According to an early notion, derived probably from the vine-clad slopes of the Rhine, the vine required a precipitous hillside, where the roots of one row of plants were exposed to the sun's rays over the top of the vines on the next lower level; but here again experience has shown that level land is quite as advantageous for growth if the rows be far enough, say nine feet, apart. Level ground is greatly to the advantage of the grape grower.

Europeans train vines to a stake; the American system is that of tying vines to a trellis made of wires stretched at length from post to post, with vines about eight feet apart in the row. In either case the object is the same, to raise the fruit from the ground and give it plenty of air and sun. Grape raisers give three principles to be observed in pruning vines. 1. Fruit is borne on wood of the present season which arises from wood of the previous season. A shoot of 1905 makes a number of buds. In 1906 these buds make shoots, on the bases of which clusters of grapes grow. Only strong buds, on hard, well matured cane (not old wood though), will produce such cluster-bearing shoots. 2. A vine should bear only a limited number of clusters, say from thirty to sixty. 3. The bearing wood should be kept near the original trunk or head of the vine. Wild grapes soon grow out of reach. With these ideas in mind, the pruner cuts away the larger part of each year's growth, reserving a few hard, well ripened canes, shortened until the entire plant carries from fifteen to twenty buds only. Pruning should not be done during the growing season. Grapes are grafted readily. To avoid bending by wind the vine is cut off a few inches below the surface of the ground and a cleft graft is inserted in the stump. This work must be done before the sap starts in the spring. Grape plants are usually started by cuttings. Well matured cane is cut into slips with about three buds each. The slips are inserted in mellow soil until the upper bud is at the surface of the ground. In cold climates vines must be laid down and covered in the fall to prevent thawing on warm days. It is not freezing, but thawing and freezing, that kills vines. If soil be too rich, the plants will run to vine instead of fruit. The cost of plowing, planting, cultivating two seasons, building trellises, and training vines is put at $70 to $80 per acre in the grape country of New York, and the yearly cost of maintaining and harvesting a bearing vineyard is reckoned at from $20 to $25 per acre. A careful grower aims to produce four tons of Concords to the acre, but has to be satisfied with half the yield. Nearly all communities largely interested in grape growing have some sort of a fruit-selling association. In this way a manager can avoid flooding one market with fruit while another market is temporarily undersupplied. One of the problems of grape culture is the disposition of an unusually large crop. Of late efforts have been made to take care of surplus grapes by bottling unfermented grape juice for the market. Many fruits are the better for early picking, but grapes do not ripen after they are removed from the vine and are deprived of sun and air. The difficulty found in raising the wine grape in the North and South has been mentioned; but from Texas westward no such condition exists. Grape vines from Europe, probably from Spain, were introduced by the missions at an early date. California now raises Old World grapes in enormous quantities. Eighty thousand acres are in wine grapes; 40,000 in raisin grapes, and 20,000 in table grapes. The shippers of California table grapes send about 1,000 cars eastward each season. California growers prune close into a bush shape and dispense with stakes and trellises. In order to prevent disease, the wine grape is grafted on a native root. Owing to the presence of a large amount of grape sugar, an easily digested sweet, grapes are considered highly nutritious. See Wine; Raisin; Bull; Concord; Catawba; Sugar; Mutation