Manual of American Grape-Growing Part 1

Manual of American Grape-Growing.

by U. P. Hedrick.

PREFACE

Seventy-nine books on grapes enrich the pomology of North America, not counting numerous state and national publications. Pomological writers in America have been partial to the grape, for other fruits do not fare nearly so well. Twenty-two books are devoted to the strawberry, fourteen to the apple, to the peach nine, cranberry eight, plum five, pear nine, quince two, loganberry one, while the cherry, raspberry, and blackberry are not once separated from other fruits in special books. Thus, though a comparative newcomer among the fruits of the country, the grape has been singled out for a treatise more times than all other fruits of temperate climates combined--seventy-nine books on the grape, seventy on all other fruits.

This statement of partiality does not lead to an apology for a new book on the grape. There is urgent need for a new book. But three of the seventy-nine treatises on this fruit are contemporary, and all but one, a handbook on training, are records from vanished minds. Methods change so rapidly and varieties multiply so fast, that to keep pace there must be new books on fruits every few years. Besides, the types of grapes are so diverse, and different soils, climates, and treatments produce such widely dissimilar results, that many books are required to do justice to this fruit--the vineyard should be seen through many eyes.

Commercial grape-growing is now a great industry in America, and deserves a treatise or its own. But there are also many demands for information on grape-growing by those who grow fruits for pleasure, especially by those who are escaping from cities to suburban homes, for the grape is a favorite fruit of the amateur. And so, though Pleasure and Profit are a hard team to drive together, this manual is written for both commercial and amateur grape-growers.

In particular, the needs of the amateur are recognized in the chapter on varieties, where many sorts are described which have little or no commercial value. No other fruit offers the enchantment of novelty to be found in the grape. Alluring flavors, sizes, and colors abound, of which the amateur wants samples. The commercial grower who plants but one variety often finds himself dissatisfied with the humdrum of the business. He should emulate the amateur and plant more kinds, if only for pleasure, remembering the adage, "No profit grows where is no pleasure ta'en." Greater pleasure in grape-growing, then, is offered as the justification of the long chapter on varieties.

At the risk of too broad spreading, the author discusses, in a book mainly devoted to native grapes, the culture of European grapes in the far West. The chief aim is, of course, to set forth information that will be helpful to growers of these grapes in the western states, there being no treatises to which western growers can refer, other than bulletins from state and national agricultural inst.i.tutions.

There is, however, another reason for attempting to cover the whole field of grape-growing in America. It is certain that eastern grape-growers will sometime grow European grapes. Western vineyards might well be enlarged with plantings of native grapes. On the supposition, then, that the culture of both European and native grapes is to become less and less restricted in America, the author has ventured to discuss the culture of all grapes for all parts of North America.

In the preparation of this manual, the author's "The Grapes of New York," a book long out of print and never widely distributed, has been laid under heavy contribution, especially in the description of varieties. Acknowledgments are due to F. Z. Hartzell for reading the chapter on Grape Pests and their Control and for furnis.h.i.+ng most of the photographs used in making ill.u.s.trations of insects and fungi; to F. E. Gladwin for similar help in preparing the two chapters on pruning and training the grape in eastern America; to Frederic T.

Bioletti for permission to republish from a bulletin written by him from the Agricultural Experiment Station of California almost the whole chapter on Grape Pruning on the Pacific Slope; and to O. M.

Taylor and to R. D. Anthony for very material a.s.sistance in reading the ma.n.u.script and proofs.

U. P. HEDRICK.

GENEVA, N. Y., Jan. 1, 1919.

MANUAL OF AMERICAN GRAPE-GROWING

CHAPTER I

THE DOMESTICATION OF THE GRAPE

The domestication of an animal or a plant is a milestone in the advance of agriculture and so becomes of interest to every human being. But, more particularly, the materials, the events and the men who direct the work of domestication are of interest to those who breed and care for animals and plants; the grape-grower should find much profit in the story of the domestication of the grape. What was the raw material of a fruit known since the beginning of agriculture and wherever temperate fruits are grown? How has this material been fas.h.i.+oned into use? Who were the originative and who the directive agents? These are fundamental questions in the improvement of the grape, answers to which will also throw much light on the culture of it.

Botanists number from forty to sixty species of grapes in the world.

These are widely distributed in the northern hemisphere, all but a few being found in temperate countries. Thus, more than half of the named species come from the United States and Canada, while nearly all of the others are from China and j.a.pan, with but one species certainly growing wild in southwestern Asia and bordering parts of Europe. All true grapes have more or less edible fruits, and of the twenty or more species grown in the New World more than half have been or are being domesticated. Of the Old World grapes, only one species is cultivated for fruit, but this, of all grapes, is of greatest economic importance and, therefore, deserves first consideration.

THE EUROPEAN GRAPE

The European grape, _Vitis vinifera_ (Fig. 1), is the grape of ancient and modern agriculture. It is the vine which Noah planted after the Deluge; the vine of Israel and of the Promised Land; the vine of the parables in the New Testament. It is the grape and the vine of the myths, fables, poetry and prose of all peoples. It is the grape from which the wines of the world are made. From it come the raisins of the world. It is the chief agricultural crop of southern Europe and northern Africa and of vast regions in other parts of the world, having followed civilized man from place to place in all temperate climates. The European grape has so impressed itself on the human mind that when one thinks or speaks of the grape, or of the vine, it is this Old World species, the vine of antiquity, that presents itself.

The written records of the cultivation of the European grape go back five or six thousand years. The ancient Egyptians, Phoenicians, Greeks and Romans grew the vine and made wine from its fruit. Grape seeds have been found in the remains of European peoples of prehistoric times, showing that primitive men enlivened their scanty fare with wild grapes. Cultivation of the grape in the Old World probably began in the region about the Caspian Sea where the vine has always run wild. We have proof of the great antiquity of the grape in Egypt, for its seeds are found entombed with the oldest mummies. Probably the Phoenicians, the earliest navigators on the Mediterranean, carried the grape from Egypt and Syria to Greece, Rome and other countries bordering on this sea. The domestication of the grape was far advanced in Christ's time, for Pliny, writing then, describes ninety-one kinds of grapes and fifty kinds of wine.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 1. A shoot of _Vitis vinifera_.]

It can never be known exactly when the European grape came under cultivation. There is no word as to what were the methods and processes of domestication, and whose the minds and hands that remodeled the wild grape of Europe into the grape of the vineyards.

The Old World grape was domesticated long before the faint traditions which have been transmitted to our day could possibly have arisen. For knowledge of how wild species of this fruit have been and may be brought under cultivation, we must turn to New World records.

AMERICAN GRAPES

Few other plants in the New World grow wild under such varied conditions and over such extended areas as the grape. Wild grapes are found in the warmer parts of New Brunswick; on the sh.o.r.es of the Great Lakes; everywhere in the woodlands of the North and Middle Atlantic states; on the limestone soils of Kentucky, Tennessee and the Virginias; and they thrive in the sandy woods, sea plains and reef-keys of the South Atlantic and Gulf states. While not so common west of the Mississippi, yet some kind of wild grape is found from North Dakota to Texas; grapes grow on the mountains and in the canons of all the Rocky Mountain states; and several species thrive on the Mexican borders and in the far Southwest.

While it is possible that all American grapes have descended from an original species, the types are now as diverse as the regions they inhabit. The wild grapes of the forests have long slender trunks and branches, whereby their leaves are better exposed to the sunlight. Two shrubby species do not attain a greater height than four or five feet; these grow in sandy soils, or among rocks exposed to sun and air.

Another runs on the ground and bears foliage almost evergreen. The stem of one species attains a diameter of a foot, bearing its foliage in a great canopy. From this giant form the species vary to slender, graceful, climbing vines. Wild grapes are as varied in climatic adaptations as in structure of vine and grow luxuriantly in every condition of heat or cold, wetness or dryness, capable of supporting fruit-culture in America. So many of the kinds have horticultural possibilities that it seems certain that some grape can be domesticated in all of the agricultural regions of the country, their natural plasticity indicating, even if it were not known from experience, that all can be domesticated.

Leif the Lucky, the first European to visit America, if the Icelandic records are true, christened the new land Wineland. It has been supposed that this designation was given for the grapes, but recent investigations show that the fruits were probably mountain cranberries. Captain John Hawkins, who visited the Spanish settlements in Florida in 1565, mentions wild grapes among the resources of the New World. Amadas and Barlowe, sent out by Raleigh in 1584, describe the coasts of the Carolinas as, "so full of grapes that in all the world like abundance cannot be found." Captain John Smith, writing in 1606, describes the grapes of Virginia and recommends the culture of the vine as an industry for the newly founded colony. Few, indeed, are the explorers of the Atlantic seaboard who do not mention grapes among the plants of the country. Yet none saw intrinsic value in these wild vines. To the Europeans, the grapes of the Old World alone were worth cultivating, and the vines growing everywhere in America only suggested that the grape they had known across the sea might be grown in the new home.

That American viticulture must depend on the native species for its varieties began to be recognized at the beginning of the nineteenth century, when several large companies engaged in growing foreign grapes failed, and a meritorious native grape made its appearance. The vine of promise was a variety known as the Alexander. Thomas Jefferson, ever alert for the agricultural welfare of the nation, writing in 1809 to John Adlum, one of the first experimenters with an American species, voiced the sentiment of grape experimenters in speaking of the Alexander: "I think it will be well to push the culture of this grape without losing time and efforts in the search of foreign vines, which it will take centuries to adapt to our soil and climate."

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 2. A shoot of _Vitis Labrusca_.]

Alexander is an offshoot of the common fox-grape, _Vitis Labrusca_ (Fig. 2), found in the woods on the Atlantic coast from Maine to Georgia and occasionally in the Mississippi Valley. The history of the variety dates back to before the Revolutionary War, when, according to William Bartram, the Quaker botanist, it was found growing in the vicinity of Philadelphia, by John Alexander, gardener to Governor Penn of Pennsylvania. Curiously enough, it came into general cultivation through the deception of a nurseryman. Peter Legaux, a French-American grape-grower, in 1801 sold the Kentucky Vineyard Society fifteen hundred grape cuttings which he said had been taken from an European grape introduced from the Cape of Good Hope, therefore called the "Cape" grape. Legaux's grape turned out to be the Alexander. In the new home the spurious Cape grew wonderfully well and as the knowledge of its fruitfulness in Kentucky, Ohio and Indiana spread, demand for it increased, and with remarkable rapidity, considering the time, it came into general cultivation in the parts of the United States then settled.

_The Labrusca or fox-grapes._

Of the several species of American grapes now under cultivation, the Labrusca, first represented by the Alexander, has furnished more cultivated varieties than all the other American species together, no less than five hundred of its varieties having been grown in the vineyards of the country. There are several reasons why it is the most generally cultivated species. It is native to the parts of the United States in which agriculture soonest advanced to a state where fruits were desired. In the wild, the Labruscas are the most attractive, being largest and handsomest in color; among all grapes it alone shows black-, white- and red-fruited forms on wild vines. There is a northern and a southern form of the species, and its varieties are, therefore, widely adapted to climates and to soils. The flavor of the fruits of this species, all things considered, is rather better than that of any other of our wild grapes, though the skins in most of its varieties have a peculiar aroma, somewhat p.r.o.nounced in the well-known Concord, Niagara and Worden, which is disagreeable to tastes accustomed to the pure flavors of the European grapes. All Labruscas submit well to vineyard operations and are vigorous, hardy and productive, though they are more subject to the dreaded phylloxera than are most of the other cultivated native species. Of the many grapes of this type, at least two deserve brief historical mention.

Catawba, probably a pure-bred Labrusca, the first American grape of commercial importance, is the most interesting variety of its species.

The origin of the variety is not certainly known, but all evidence points to its having been found about the year 1800 on the banks of the Catawba River, North Carolina. It was introduced into general cultivation by Major John Adlum, soldier of the Revolution, judge, surveyor and author of the first American book on grapes. Adlum maintained an experimental vineyard in the District of Columbia, whence in 1823 he began the distribution of the Catawba. At that time the center of American grape culture was about Cincinnati, and an early s.h.i.+pment of Adlum's Catawbas went to Nicholas Longworth of that city and was by him distributed throughout the grape-growing centers of the country. As one of the first to test new varieties of American grapes, to grow them largely and to make wine commercially from them, Nicholas Longworth is known as the "father of American grape culture."

Catawba is still one of the four leading varieties in the vineyards of eastern America. The characters whereby its high place is maintained among grapes are: Great elasticity of const.i.tution, by reason of which the vine is adapted to many environments; rich flavor, long-keeping quality, and handsome appearance of fruit, qualities which make it a very good dessert grape; high sugar-content and a rich flavor of juice, so that from its fruit is made a very good wine and a very good grape-juice; and vigor, hardiness and productiveness of vine. The characters of Catawba are readily transmissible, and it has many pure-bred or hybrid offspring which more or less resemble it.

The second commercial grape of importance in American viticulture is Concord, which came from the seed of a wild grape planted in the fall of 1843 by Ephraim W. Bull, Concord, Ma.s.sachusetts. The new variety was disseminated in the spring of 1854, and from the time of its introduction the spread of its culture was phenomenal. By 1860 it was the leading grape in America and it so remains. Concord furnishes, with the varieties that have sprung from it, seventy-five per cent of the grapes grown in eastern America. The characters which distinguish the vine are: Adaptability to various soils, fruitfulness, hardiness and resistance to diseases and insects. The fruits are distinguished by certainty of maturity, attractive appearance, good but not high flavor, and by the fact that they may be produced so cheaply that no other grape can compete with this variety in the markets. Concord is, as Horace Greeley well denominated it in awarding the Greeley prize for the best American grape, "the grape for the millions."

The histories of these two grapes are typical of those of five hundred or more other Labruscas. Out of a prodigious number of native seedlings, an occasional one is found greatly to excel its fellows and is brought under cultivation.

_The Rotundifolia or Muscadine grapes._

Long before the northern Labruscas had attained prominence in the vineyards of the North, a grape had been domesticated partially in the South. It is _Vitis rotundifolia_ (Fig. 3), a species which runs riot from the Potomac to the Gulf, thriving in many diverse soils, but growing only in the southern climate and preferring the seacoast.

Rotundifolia grapes have been cultivated somewhat for fruit or ornament from the earliest colonial times. It is certain that wine was made from this species by the English settlers at Jamestown. Vines of it are now to be found on arbors, in gardens or half wild on fences in nearly every farm in the South Atlantic states. That the Rotundifolias have not been more generally brought under cultivation is due to the bountifulness of the wild vines, which has obviated the necessity of domesticating them. The fruit of its varieties, to a palate unaccustomed to them, is not very acceptable, having a musky flavor and odor and a sweet, juicy pulp, which is lacking in sprightliness. Many, however, acquire a taste for these grapes and find them pleasant eating. The great defect of this grape is that the berries part from the pedicels as they ripen and perfect bunches cannot be secured. In fact, the crop is often harvested by shaking the vines so that the berries drop on sheets beneath. Despite these defects, a score or more varieties of this species are now under general cultivation in the cotton-belt, and interest in their domestication is now greater than in any other species, with great promise for the future.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 3. A shoot of _Vitis rotundifolia_.]

_The aestivalis or summer-grapes._

The South has another grape of remarkable horticultural possibilities.

This is _Vitis aestivalis_ (Fig. 4), the summer-grape or, to distinguish it from the Rotundifolias, the bunch-grape of southern forests. There are now a score or more well-known varieties of this species, the best known being Norton, which probably originated with Dr. D. N. Norton, Richmond, Virginia, in the early part of the nineteenth century. The berries of the true aestivalis grapes are too small, too dest.i.tute of pulp and too tart to make good dessert fruits, but from them are made our best native red wines. Domestication of this species has been greatly r.e.t.a.r.ded by a peculiarity of the species which hinders its propagation. Grapes are best propagated from cuttings, but this species is not easily reproduced by this means and the difficulty of securing good young vines has been a serious handicap in its culture.

There are two subspecies of _Vitis aestivalis_ which promise much for American viticulture. _Vitis aestivalis Bourquiniana_, known only under cultivation and of very doubtful botanical standing, furnishes American viticulture several valuable varieties. Chief of these is the Delaware, the introduction of which sixty years ago from the town of Delaware, Ohio, raised the standard in quality of New World grapes to that of Old World. No European grape has a richer or more delicate flavor, or a more pleasing aroma, than Delaware. While a northern grape, it can be grown in the South, and thrives under so many different climatic and soil conditions and under all is so fruitful, that, next to the Concord, it is the most popular American grape for garden and vineyard. Without question, however, Delaware contains a trace of European blood.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 4. A shoot of _Vitis aestivalis_.]