Читать книгу Manual of American Grape-Growing - U. P. Hedrick - Страница 82

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THE VINEYARD AND ITS MANAGEMENT

A vineyard is more artificial than other plantations of fruits, since the vine requires greater discipline under cultivation than tree or bush. Yet greater art is required only when the attempt is made to grow the grape to perfection, for the vine bears fruit if left to indulge in riotous growth wheresoever it can strike root. Vineyard management, therefore, may represent the consummate art of three thousand or more years of cultural subserviency; or it may be so primeval in simplicity as to approach neglect. The grape is so wonderfully responsive to good care, however, that no true lover of fruit will profane it with neglect, but will seek, rather, to give it a favorable situation, its choice of soils and such generous care as will insure strong, vigorous, productive vineyards of choicely good fruit.

Grape-growing is a specialists' business, for the culture of the grape is unlike that of any other fruit. The essentials of vineyard management, however, are easily learned. Indeed, care of the vine comes almost instinctively; for the grape has been cultivated since prehistoric times and the races of the world are so familiar with it through sacred literatures, myths, fables, stories and poetry, that its care is prompted by natural impulse. The grape has followed civilized man so closely from place to place through the temperate climates of the world, that rules and methods of culture have been developed for almost every condition under which it will grow, so that every grape-grower may profit by the successes and failures of the generations that preceded him. Grape-growing is not, however, an art wholly governed by rules of the past to be carried on by common laborers who use hands only, but is one in which its followers may make use of science and may put thought, skill and taste into their work.