Читать книгу The Raisin Industry - Gustavus A. Eisen - Страница 54

—While no general irrigation is needed, the young vines are watered by hand in years of exceptionally light rainfall. The vines are generally grown from rooted cuttings, which have been planted in trenches the year before. Previous to the planting of a vineyard, the soil is dug to the depth of three or four feet. If this can be done the year before planting, it is considered better, as resulting in a quicker and stronger growth of the vines.

In older vineyards, the vines are set in rows six or seven feet apart, and with three or four feet between the rows. The vines are not grown to standards, but from branching stalks from one to two and a half feet high, with an average height of one and a half feet from the ground. No stakes are used, and only occasionally is there seen a prop under heavier loaded branches.

The pruning is done in the winter, when the vines are comparatively dormant. The superfluous branches are then cut away, and the remaining ones are cut to two or three eyes each. The cultivation was, until lately, performed in the simplest way with pick and spade. The first digging is done in January, at which time also the ground is manured. This is done by digging pits and trenches in the vineyard, which are filled with goat and camel dung. These trenches remain open for a month or more, and are after that time filled in. The first digging in the soil is done in November, the second one in January and February, when, in leveling the ground, it is at the same time dug over again one foot or more. The third or last digging is performed in March, when simply the weeds are spaded under. Of late years, vineyardists from other Mediterranean districts have settled in Smyrna and brought with them better methods. Greek farmers have especially done much to improve the old ways of cultivation used by the slovenly or ignorant natives.

In May, the young shoots are pinched back after the grapes have set well and began to develop. The pinching of the ends produces a second crop, which, besides being later, also consists of smaller grapes than the first. All sterile and inferior shoots are then cut off, and this is repeated during the summer in order that the vines may not be weakened unnecessarily. The vines come into bearing in the third year, begin to pay expenses in the fourth year, and leave a profit in the fifth year after being set out. In the seventh and eighth years the vines are considered in full bearing.

The Sultana grapes begin to ripen in July. The vintage begins towards the end of July, and lasts until the middle of August. Other varieties of grapes are later, lasting from the middle of August to the end of September, their vintage seldom lasting as late as the first week of October. The first raisins are ready about August 1st, and the last Sultanas are all in by September 1st, the other varieties of raisins coming in later.