European Grapes In Eastern America

As we have seen, there were many efforts to grow European grapes in

America during the first two centuries in the settlement of the

country. The various attempts, some involving individuals, others

corporations and in early days even colonies, form about the most

instructive and dramatic episodes in the history of American

agriculture. All endeavors, it will be remembered, were failures, so

dismally and pathetically co plete that we are wont to think of the

two hundred years from the first settlements in America to the

introduction of the Isabella, a native grape, as time wasted in futile

culture of a foreign fruit. The early efforts were far from wasted,

however, for out of the tribulations of two centuries of grape-growing

came the domestication of our native grapes, one of the most

remarkable achievements of agriculture.



The advent of Isabella and Catawba wholly turned the thoughts of

vineyardists from Old World to New World grapes. So completely,

indeed, were viticulturists won by the thousand and more native

grapes, that for the century which followed no one has planted Old

World grapes east of the Rockies, while vineyards of native species

may be found North and South from the Atlantic to the Pacific.



Meanwhile, much new knowledge has come to agriculture, old fallacies

have received many hard knocks and chains of tradition in which the

culture of plants was bound, have been broken. In no field of

agriculture have workers received greater aid from science than in

viticulture. Particularly is this true of the diseases of the vine.

The reports of the old experimenters were much the same, "a sickness

takes hold of the vines and they die." What the sickness was and

whether there were preventatives or remedies, no one knew a hundred

years ago. But in the last half century we have learned much about the

ills of grapes and now know preventatives or remedies for most of

them. We know also that the early vine-growers failed, in part at

least, because they followed empirical European practices. Is it not

possible that with the new knowledge we can now grow European grapes

in eastern America? The New York Agricultural Experiment Station has

put this question to test, with results indicating that European

grapes may now be grown successfully in eastern America. The following

is an account of the work with this fruit at the New York Station.