Читать книгу The Raisin Industry - Gustavus A. Eisen - Страница 47

—After irrigation is over, the vineyards are dug over. The soil is dug up around the vines and placed on top of the ground in small heaps, which process is considered beneficial both to the roots of the vines and to the soil. In April, this soil is all put back, and the ground leveled. Each vine is staked. By the middle of April, the vines are in leaf. By the middle of July, the first fruit is ripe, and by the middle of August the harvest has everywhere begun. The stakes for the vines are imported at a cost of $15 or $16 per thousand, and constitute the most expensive item in the construction of a currant vineyard.

The mildew or oidium, which some fifty years ago spread all over the world, destroyed many of the vineyards before the sulphuring was discovered as a sure remedy. Sulphuring the vines is now regularly practiced in all the vineyards; but there is a popular belief that the raisins are no longer of the same fine and pure flavor as they used to be before the advent of the oidium and the sulphur.