Vine (plant)

“ THE MOSS GROWS BETWEEN THE STONE WALK
The color scheme depends on garden planting. If lavender is chosen it should be reproduced all [Pg 29] through the line. Do not be so foolish as to choose one vine only but plant them in order to make a succession of bloom. One does not wish to view a spot of color now and a mass of green later on.
There are so many different kinds of vines that can be planted for this use, each one of which is admirable, that it is hard to choose. Commencing with the earliest why not take the American or the loose-cluster wisteria. ”

“ This plant climbs upon the trees without attaching itself to them; when it has reached the topmost branches, it descends perpendicularly, and as it continues to grow, extends from tree to tree, until its various stalks interlace the grove like the rigging of a ship. The stems or trunks of this vine are tougher and more flexible than willow, and are from fifty to one hundred fathoms in length. From the fibres, the Indians manufacture baskets of such close texture as to hold water. ”

“ Small, sharp-pointed leaves, tube-flowers only a half-inch long, fine thready twining stems—everything about this tropical vine is miniature except the height to which it will climb in the greenhouse, or outdoors in the South. Although its inclination is to climb, it is sold most often as a plant for hanging baskets. ”

“ The vine, indeed, as grown in Italy—especially when the fruit is ripe, and the leaves begin to be tinted with crimson and yellow—is an exceedingly pretty object, rich in coloring, and elegant in its forms. Nothing but the most obsolete and backward agriculture, however, preserves these beauties. If good wine and not pretty crops be the object in view, the vine should be grown as in France—a low dwarf plant closely pruned, and raised only two or three feet from the ground ”

“ For planting, 1-or 2-year-old vines should be used, being set either in the fall or early spring. At planting, the vine is cut back to 3 or 4 eyes, and the roots are well shortened in. The hole in which the plant is to be set should be large enough to allow a full spreading of the roots. If the season should be dry, a mulch of coarse litter may be spread around the vine. If all the buds start, the strongest one or two may be allowed to grow. The canes arising from these buds should be staked and allowed to grow through the season ”

“ It has neither tendril nor disc, and supports itself by twisting its new growth about trees over which it clambers, branches—anything that it can wind about. If no other support is to be found it will twist about itself in such a manner as to form a great rope of branches. It has attractive foliage, but the chief beauty of the vine is its clusters of pendant fruit, which hang to the plant well into winter. This fruit is a berry of bright crimson, enclosed in an orange shell which cracks open, in three pieces, and becomes reflexed, thus disclosing the berry within. ”

“ The probabilities are that only two or three new vines are wanted; therefore all the others should be rubbed off at the start, so that the strength of the parent plant and of the new roots that are forming may go into those few shoots designed to become eventually a part of our vineyard. If we wish only one vine, then but one bud should grow from the layer; if two vines, then two buds. The fewer buds that are permitted to grow, the stronger vines they make. ”

“ As this morning-glory is a vine which lives at many of your doorsteps, I hope you will not fail to collect its seeds, and look at their baby plants. When these are very young, still surrounded by a quantity of baby food, you will not be able to make them out unless you carry them to your teacher and borrow her glass; but when the seed is ripe, and the little plant has eaten away most of the surrounding food, it grows so big that you can see it quite plainly with your own eyes. ”

“ When the plants are put into the ground there should be one vine to each hole; and, as every hole is made opposite a rafter, there is thus one vine allotted to every sash or light. A shallow pit is made in the ground for each vine, and, [Pg 252] the pot being either broken with the spade or the plant carefully turned out of it, the ball of earth containing the roots is placed in the pit, in such a manner as to leave the cane as nearly as possible in the same position as it occupied when the plant was in the pot. ”

“ The ground in which a layer is placed should be very rich, and its surface round the young growing vines always kept moist and free from weeds. In the autumn, after the leaves have fallen and the wood is ripe and hard, cut off the layered branch close to the vine, and with a garden-fork gently and carefully lift it, with all its roots and young vines attached, out of the soil. First cut the young vines back to three or four buds, then separate them from the branch from which they grew, being sure to give each plant plenty of roots, and the roots BACK of the point from which it grew ”

“ The vine begins to bear in three or four years after the cuttings have been planted, and yields two crops annually for about thirteen years. It is an East Indian plant, rather pretty, but of rambling and untidy growth, a climber, with smooth, soft stems, ten or twelve feet long, and tough, broadly ovate leaves. ”

“ There are circumstances by which he must be guided, in leaving a greater quantity of bearing branches, or retrenching their number: these are, the nature of the climate, the exposure, the nature of the soil, the vigour of the plant, the quality of the wood formed the preceding year. The age of the vine ought, also, to be considered, and the kind to which it belongs; one kind, is famous for ripening a large quantity of grapes; another, is capable of bringing only a small quantity of grapes to perfection. The vine, too heavily charged, is soon exhausted; too lightly, it yields little but wood. ”

“ It makes a long tangled vine, full of wicked short thorns and small, pretty leaves. The flowers are not large but the bright red bracts add a touch of color and the plant is covered with them most of the year. ”

“ It has a thick branching perennial rootstock—in the cultivated plant called a “set”—from which are produced several long, thin, but tough twining stems that turn with the sun, and tightly clasp the nearest small tree or shrub. It has no tendrils like the vine, but climbs like the convolvulus by simply twining with the sun as it grows. Its lobed and coarsely toothed leaves are very similar to those of the grape-vine, but very rough. The leaves are in pairs, and at the base of the leaf-stalk is a pair of long curved stipules. ”

“ The necessity of adhering to a system of pruning, which will equalize, as much as possible, the fruit which a vine is allowed to bear to its strength, is so great, that there are few instances of vines being let. The interest of the farmer, might induce him to leave a quantity of fruit on the vine, which would destroy its future capacity for bearing. Thus, to charge a plant as heavily as it will bear and to charge it to death, are synonimous expressions. ”

“ Left to herself, she will give a superabundance of vine, with sufficient fruit for purposes of propagation and feeding the birds. Our object is to obtain the maximum of fruit from a minimum of vine. The little plant, even though grown from a single bud, will sprawl all over everything near it in three or four years, if unchecked. Pruning may begin even before midsummer of the first year. ”

“ At the fourth year, a well planted vine has acquired strength to give fruit—two eyes may be left on two or three of the strongest shoots. The pruning in the fifth season, still requires particular management; two eyes should be left only on the strongest of the new wood, and that which has less vigour, should retain only one; the whole number of the branches of young wood thus left, should not exceed five. The young plant has now become a made vine. ”

“ It is well known that the costly experiments of a century at the Cape of Good Hope have verified the fact that the vine is the slave of certain conditions of soil, which impart to this extremely delicate and sensitive plant a special flavour that is incorporated with the wine, and can never be eradicated. ”

“ Qualities are thus produced in fruits, which, naturally, they would not attain; and there are two sorts of maturity, that which nature, left to herself, gives, which is sufficient to propagate, by seed, the plant in its natural climate, and that which art procures, in carrying the fruit to a higher degree of perfection, at the expense of the other parts of the tree. In the vine, there way be said to be a third sort of maturity ”

“ High winds are always prejudicial to vines; they parch the stocks, the fruit, and the soil, and produce, especially on strong soils, a hard and compact crust at the surface, which prevents the free circulation of the air and water, and keeps an injurious dampness at the root.
The influence of fogs is, in many points of view, injurious to vines; besides the putrid miasm they too often deposit on the fruits of the field, they moisten the surface of the plant, without penetrating farther, and when struck by the rays of the sun, their evaporation is instantaneous. ”

“ The proportion which it is necessary to preserve between the sap circulating in the plant, and the heat which is to modify that sap, will not admit of a larger growth; besides, it is only near the surface of the earth that there is a sufficient degree of heat to ripen the grape. In warmer climates, a vine is capable of bringing to maturity a large portion of fruit, and its height, and its branches, may be proportionably increased, but there seems, in this respect, a bound which may not be passed with advantage. ”

“ Notwithstanding—that a concurrence of so many favourable circumstances, with regard to soil, exposure, and seasons, is necessary to bring the grape to that degree of perfection which, with proper management, insures a good wine; the vine, in climates favourable for it, is a hardy plant. ”

“ The greatest caution is recommended, in selecting the stocks, from which to take cuttings. When the mother plant has not finished half its career, it is still endued with all its vegetative energy, therefore, they should have reached the age of eight or ten years, where the vines subsist during twenty-five or thirty years, and from twenty to thirty years, where they endure a hundred. ”

“ In all the notices which history has left us, of its introduction into France, and its culture in that country, as well as in those which carry us back to the ages of fable, in Italy and Greece; there is, as far as I have been able to find, no mention of the propagation of the vine by seed. The materials, indeed, from which our information is derived, are scanty and obscure, but it is remarkable, that at this day, the unlettered vigneron of France, is scarcely aware that it is possible by this method to propagate the plant ”

“ In our land of labor-saving machinery and expensive hand labor this is what makes the pipes costly.
The vine forms a very satisfactory cover for unsightly brush heaps or fences, though its rather rank odor might prove objectionable if used for an arbor too near the dwelling. To grow the vine for the sake of its gourds is where the chief interest lies, however, and to do this well it should not be trained on a trellis, but allowed to trail over the ground. ”

“ A great many plants perform remarkable acts which can only be explained by the possession of some measure of psychic sense or quality. Thus, a climbing plant in need of a prop will creep along the ground toward the nearest vertical support. If the support is shifted, the vine will promptly change the direction of its progress, and eventually reach the object of its desires.
Inasmuch as it is positively known that plants are sensitive to light, it may be that, in this case, the vine actually perceives the support through a process akin to animal sight ”

“ It has been found that an excessive amount of organic matter in the soil will frequently produce an abundant growth of vines at the expense of the roots. It has also been noted that the potatoes will be small and the yield unsatisfactory on soils that do not contain sufficient organic matter to produce a fair growth of vine. ”

“ Calcareous soils are in general favourable to the vine; dry, free, and light, they every where afford a free circulation to the water with which they are impregnated, and allow the numerous tender ramifications of the roots to extend in all directions, in search of the juices which are appropriated by the plant. ”

“ It will be seen, in the passages of the work already alluded to, that some of the operations, recommended to renew vines, bear no very distant resemblance to what is here described; and when it becomes necessary, after 25 or 30 years (to which period only the life of vines in some districts extends) , to renew a plant which, without such aid, is capable of attaining the age of 600 years, there is little presumption in supposing that they are the progeny of a parent which was produced in a very remote age ”

“ In these, the vine grows freely, but this very strength of vegetation, as has been before observed, is essentially hurtful to the quality of the grape, which, with difficulty, attains to maturity, and produces a wine without strength or flavour. If, then, a rich soil is free and open, the vine planted in it flourishes vigorously, producing in abundance a wine, weak, watery, and destitute of perfume ”