Trellises and Stakes as Used in the Vineyard

Various

Description

This vintage book contains a comprehensive guide to growing grapes, with a focus on training vines with the use of trellises and stakes. Written in simple language and profusely illustrated, this volume is highly recommended for budding gardeners with an interest in grape production, and would make for a fantastic addition to collections of related literature. Contents include: “Walls and Trellises”, “Supports and Trellises”, “Vineyard Stakes”, “Vines on Trellises”, “Stakes and Trellises”, “Distances and Trellises”, and “Grape Trellises”. Many vintage books such as this are becoming increasingly rare and expensive. It is with this in mind that we are republishing this volume now in an affordable, high-quality edition complete with a specially commissioned new introduction on growing fruit.

Sujets

• Vine training
• Woodworking

Informations

• Publié par: Read Books Ltd.
• Date de parution: 08 janvier 2021
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781528763813
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Trellises and Stakes as used in the Vineyard
-Selected Articles-
by
Various Authors
Copyright 2013 Read Books Ltd. This book is copyright and may not be reproduced or copied in any way without the express permission of the publisher in writing
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Winemaking
The science of wine and winemaking is known as oenology , and winemaking, or vinification , is the production of wine, starting with selection of the grapes or other produce and ending with bottling the finished product. Although most wine is made from grapes, it may also be made from other fruits, vegetables or plants. Mead, for example, is a wine that is made with honey being the primary ingredient after water and sometimes grain mash, flavoured with spices, fruit or hops dependent on local traditions. Potato wine, rice wine and rhubarb wines are also popular varieties. However, grapes are by far the most common ingredient.
First cultivated in the Near East, the grapevine and the alcoholic beverage produced from fermenting its juice were important to Mesopotamia, Israel, and Egypt and essential aspects of Phoenician, Greek, and Roman civilization. Many of the major wine-producing regions of Western Europe and the Mediterranean were first established during antiquity as great plantations, and it was the Romans who really refined the winemaking process.
Today, wine usually goes through a double process of fermentation. After the grapes are harvested, they are prepared for primary fermentation in a winery, and it is at this stage that red wine making diverges from white wine making. Red wine is made from the must (pulp) of red or black grapes and fermentation occurs together with the grape skins, which give the wine its colour. White wine is made by fermenting juice which is made by pressing crushed grapes to extract a juice; the skins are removed and play no further role. Occasionally white wine is made from red grapes; this is done by extracting their juice with minimal contact with the grapes skins. Ros wines are either made from red grapes where the juice is allowed to stay in contact with the dark skins long enough to pick up a pinkish colour (blanc de noir) or by blending red wine and white wine.
In order to embark on the primary fermentation process, yeast may be added to the must for red wine or may occur naturally as ambient yeast on the grapes or in the air. During this fermentation, which often takes between one and two weeks, the yeast converts most of the sugars in the grape juice into ethanol (alcohol) and carbon dioxide. The next process in the making of red wine is secondary fermentation. This is a bacterial fermentation which converts malic acid to lactic acid, thereby decreasing the acid in the wine and softening the taste. Red (and sometimes White) wine is sometimes transferred to oak barrels to mature for a period of weeks or months; a practice which imparts oak aromas to the wine. The end product has been both revered as a highly desirous and delicious status symbol, as well as a mass-produced, cheap form of alcohol.
Interestingly, the altered consciousness produced by wine has been considered religious since its origin. The Greeks worshipped Dionysus, the god of winemaking (as well as ritual madness and ecstasy!) and the Romans carried on his cult under the name of Bacchus. Consumption of ritual wine has been a part of Jewish practice since Biblical times and, as part of the Eucharist commemorating Jesus Last Supper, became even more essential to the Christian Church.
Its importance in the current day, for imbibing, cooking, social and religious purposes, continues. Winemaking itself, especially that on a smaller scale is also experiencing a renaissance, with farmers and individuals alike re-discovering its joy.
Contents
Walls and Trellises John Phin
Supports and Trellises William C. McCollom
Vineyard Stakes Charles Reemelin
Vines on Trellises Charles Reemelin
Stakes and Trellises Peter B. Mead
Distances and Trellises William Chamberlain Strong
Grape Trellises Andrew S. Fuller
Walls and Trellises
by
John Phin

WALLS AND TRELLISES-THEIR INFLUENCE AND CONSTRUCTION .
A LTHOUGH the influence of the various forms of walls, trellises and stakes upon the growth and maturity of the vine depends somewhat upon the system of pruning and training pursued in connection with them, still, it cannot be doubted but that their forms and the materials of which they are made also exert an influence which is by no means to be disregarded.
In this country, walls devoted to the culture of the vine have not been used to a sufficient extent, to afford reliable data as to the benefit to be derived from them. Many single vines, however, are trained on the ends of houses and along board fences, and from a careful examination of several such examples, we are inclined to believe that in exposed situations the erection of cheap walls would pay well, even in vineyards.
When vines are judiciously trained in front of brick walls and at a few inches distance from them, the grapes uniformly ripen sooner than those on exposed trellises. The wood also is more perfectly matured, and this, during a succession of years, exerts a considerable and favorable influence on the vine.
The effect of walls doubtless depends upon two causes, one being the higher temperature produced by the radiation from the surface of the solid wall, and the other being the protection from wind and storms which such a structure affords.
That the latter point is one of material importance, we are well satisfied, for however essential ventilation may be to the healthy growth of the vine, all violent winds and cold blasts are to be studiously avoided.
A striking instance of this is to be seen in the garden of a gentleman of this city. Several vines are there trained along the east side of a high board fence, and although the same judicious and systematic care is given to all parts of the vines, yet the finest fruit is uniformly found a foot or two below the top of the fence. Now when we remember that on all open trellises the finest grapes are found at the top, since all trees produce the best fruit at the extremities of the branches, we must attribute no mean effect to the protection afforded by the fence, since the boards of which it is composed can scarcely be supposed to retain and radiate much heat, and its height (about eight feet) is not sufficient to include the limit to which vines may be judiciously carried.
The actual temperature to which a tree trained upon a wall facing the sun is exposed is much higher than that of the surrounding air, not only because it receives a larger amount of the direct solar rays, but because of the heat received by the surrounding earth, reflected from it and absorbed by the wall itself. Under such circumstances the secretions of the plant are more fully elaborated than in a more shady and colder situation, and by aid of the greater heat and dryness in front of a south wall, the period of maturity is much advanced. In this way we succeed in procuring a Mediterranean or Persian summer in these northern latitudes.
When the excellence of fruit depends upon its sweetness, the quality is exceedingly improved by such an exposure to the sun; for it is found that the quantity of sugar elaborated in a fruit is obtained by an alteration of the gummy, mucilaginous, and gelatinous matters previously formed in it, and the quantity of those matters will be in proportion to the amount of light to which the tree, if healthy, has been exposed. Hence the greater sweetness of plums, pears, etc., raised on walls from those grown on standards. It has been already stated that an increase of heat has been sought for on walls by blackening them, and we are assured in the Horticultural Transactions (III. 330) that, in the cultivation of the grape, this has been attended with the best effects. But, unless when trees are young, the wall ought to be covered with foliage during the summer, and the blackened surface would scarcely act, and in the spring the expansion of the flowers would be hastened by it, which is no advantage in cold, late springs, because of the greater liability of early flowers to perish from cold. That a blackened surface does produce a beneficial effect upon trees trained over it is, however, probable, although not by hastening the maturation of the fruit; it is by raising the temperature of the wall in autumn, when the leaves are falling, and the darkened surface becomes uncovered, that the advantages are perceived by a better completion of the process of growth, the result of which is the ripening the wood. This is indeed the view taken of it by Mr. Harrison, who found the practice necessary, in order to obtain crops of pears in late seasons at Wortley, in Yorkshire (see Hort. Trans. III. 330 and VI. 453.) It hardly need be added that the effect of blackening will be in proportion to the thinness of the training and vice versa. - Lindley.
The articles referred to by Lindley, being short and practical, it may be well to transcribe them. Henry Dawes writes thus to Sir Joseph Banks: I take the liberty of communicating to you my remarks on a garden wall, on which I have been making experiments at Slough. It faces the south, and against it, about the middle, a young grape vine is trained. Two years ago I covered a portion of the wall with thick black paint. The vine was divided into two equal parts, one half was trained on the painted, and the other on the plain wall.