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You can now plow your ground between your rows, and between each row of vines, plant two rows of strawberry plants-- keep
these plant in rows by frequently using the Cultivator between the grape rows and the strawberry plants. By this you keep your
strawberries within bounds, and at the same time you keep the ground around your vines in good condition. Let no weeds grow in
your vineyard-- nor amongst your strawberry plants. By this plan of raising strawberries, last year, I sold over $3,000 worth from
four acres of my old vineyard. These plants will pay you for all the treatment of the land as well as for the vines. IT is very essen-
tial to have good healthy vines for planting any vineyard. The most failures have been made in consequence of planting inferior
plants. Many good varieties of grapes have been condemned and called "humbugs," by reason of nothing but inferior "steam plants"
buyers. I have had to pay dearly for my experience in this line.

Mr. President, my experience has taught me that the very best vines, in all cases, are those raised as layers. These layers must
be grown from well ripened wood from bearing vines. The next best, I have found to be long cuttings, grown by proper treatment

Vines from Layers.-- These can be made by any thinking man, very readily, and one having a few good vines can soon have as
many vines as he will want. If we want to see grape culture flourish we must teach people how to get good vines. and how to get
them cheap. To make layers, prepare your ground so that it will be well pulverized around the vine you wish to lay down. Under
the cane you wish to lay down, dig out a slight trench. with your hand, bend down the lowest cane or branch, and pin it down to the
bottom of the trench. Lay your vine in its whole length, and there let it lie until the eyes have made a growth of 6 or 6 inches, then
fill up half your trench with good soil-- in a week or so fill in the rest of the soil. When the young canes have made a growth of two
or three feet pinch off the ends, in order to get riper and stronger wood, and plump eyes, and then leave them to take care of them-
selves until fall. In the fall cut them loose from the mother vine, dig them up and cut them apart, so that you have a good cane from
plants. If your cane is 7 feet long, you will have perhaps some twenty or thirty-five No. 1 layers from it. Some of my bearing
vines have made me, in this way, over 100 extra good layers. You can imagine how many you can make from an acre of, say
wood enough for over a gallon of wine to each vine, and enough to make fifty superior layers. I cannot recommend you to follow
this heavy layering from your bearing vines, year after year, for you assuredly weaken your vine by so doing. Be moderate in your
layers, and you will be all right.

Plants from long Cuttings.-- Cut your canes in the fall, with from 2 to 5 eyes joints each, tie them in bundles of convenient
size ; say from fifty to a hundred, bury them in the ground, selecting a dry place, and surrounded with a little ditch-- cover well with
soil, and over that put a thick covering of litter or of manure. Before planting, have your ground well spaded, 2 feet deep, and en-
riched with potted manure. In April begin to plant-- make a straight furrow 8 inches deep. IF you are not on sandy ground, and
if you can get sand, it would be well to spread a little in the bottom of each furrow-- lay your cuttings slanting to the furrow, so that
the upper eye is just covered with the surface soil ; fill your furrow half full, treading the soil with the foot round each cutting, then
fill the rest of the furrow. Make your next row about one foot from the first, and so on over the whole piece. If convenient you
had better put on a mulch, of say two inches or so of dead leaves. This will be a great help in carrying your cuttings safely through
the summer drought, and it keeps down the weeds. If you want to make your success more certain, it will be well to give your cut-
ting bed some sort of shelter to keep off the sun. Drive stakes in the ground, upon which lay poles, and on them twigs or branches
of tress having the leaves left on. when cut green. Leave this shelter until your cuttings have made a growth o two or three
inches, removing the shelter during a cool "spell," or just before a rain storm. Keep the weeds down. The dead leaf mulch should
be put on in this case. and if too dry, frequent watering will pay you well. If your cuttings have been good, you should not lose more
than 5 per cent of them. If you plant varieties liable to mildew, I would advise you to have your shelter on until August, for shelter
is often and most always a perfect preventative of [mildev?.]

Mr. President, you now have my secrets on Grape culture, and you see they are simple enough. In this business, as in all others,
the principle required by one embarking, is common sense, no fear of work and unswerving perseverance. With these, any man can
succeed. I trust these few disjointed remarks may encourage more than one to join us in the great work we have in hand.

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ESSAY.---Dr. H. Schroder's New System of Grape Culture
and Preventive of Grape Rot.

Revolution everywhere! So in Grape Culture. Much is said and written in regard to the most dreadful disease, the Grape Rot ;
underdraining, ditching, subsoiling from 18 inches to 3 feet. long and short trimming, Sulphur, Lime and Sulphate of Lime, most
everything is tried to prevent or to cure the Grape rot. but all failed more or less. New varieties it was hoped would not be liable
to the rot. but this also has failed in most cases. The vine that rots the most, is surely the celebrated Catawba ; and let me tell
here, my friend, that where ever the Catawba will ripen, and in its perfect state, free from disease, it is a splendid grape, spicy,
showy, aromatic and vinous, and makes a superior wine; a wine that speaks to our heart, as it is said that it has such a fine effect
on our heart organs. Pity that the Catawba, in consequence of the awful rot, became so much discarded ; but I do not blame its
antagonists among Vineyardists, as they had suffered so much under its culture.

Years ago I noticed that the first crop of Catawba vines was not injured by the rot, as well in other people's vineyards as in my
own. I never forget the sight of my first Catawba crop. when the fruit on my neighbors vines was rotting, mine stood there in per-
fect health and glory. This I noticed on all my first fruiting Catawbas, as my vineyards were planted in successive years. I further
noticed that the fruit on my old wood layers, that I used to make every year, were free from rot. I then laid down several old wood
layers and cut them off from the mother vine in the Fall, and found this year that the fruit on these new vines was perfectly heal-
thy, when the fruit on old vines rotted entirely.

This last year was the hardest year for Catawba Vineyardists, and the losses can be counted by near two millions of dollars in
the West alone.

As proof I want to say, and to prove the truth of my system, that the Catawba vineyards bearing first time, (Mr. G. Lange's
and Mr Schonebeck's,) were a perfect exhibition of Grapes when older vines close by rotted entirely. Years ago it was said Nau-
voo, Warsaw and Alton, in our State, had a peculiar soil to perfect the Catawba. But I denied it in our public Horticultural gath-
erings. and it has shown that the Catawba will rot as well there as in Cincinnati and Herman or elsewhere. The Islands in Lake
Erie, it was said, were entirely free from rot, but the demon went there too, and will be worse next year when the vines will become
older. All these facts led me to a new system of Grape Culture, as most all our Grape Vines growing older, will be more or less
inclined to the rot. I claim this as my own discovery.

REMEDY: After preparing your land for the vineyards, plant the same with good strong layers of first rate cutting plants
from 8 to 12 feet apart in a square, in the usual manner: when your vines come in to bearing the first big crop, say the third or