SOILS OF THE PROVINCE OF AUCKLAND.

New Zealander, Volume XVII, Issue 1570, 4 May 1861, Page 6

SOILS OF THE PROVINCE OF AUCKLAND.

■ (No. 9.) VINK CULTURE. Amongst those productions which nve so peculiarly suited to the soil and climate of the Northern portion of New Zealand, none, while it deserves the largest, has received u smaller share of attention than the cultivation of the grape vine. True ! throughout the country a solitary vine may ho found in most of thevflettlors’ gardens, and some instances along the coast patches of vines— vineyards we cannot call them

—may be met with under Maori cultivation; but with two or three exceptions anything approaching a systematic cultivation of the wine grape we have never yet seen in New Zealand. At Mangawai, however, on the farm of M, Albieny, we tasted grapes from vines of the second year’s growth, and were informed by the owner that it was his intention during the next season to commence the manufacture of wine. Most heartily do we wish him success.

Possessing as we do a soil in many instances most admirably adapted to the cultivation of this plant, and being situated in tbe corresponding latitude with that in which it assumes its choicest perfection in the Northern Hemisphere (between the 30th and 45th degrees of North latitude) we clearly want nothing but the energy and determination to render its further introduction amongst us a permanent institution—if we may so term it. Land, which from its rugged stony nature can never become practically valuable for agricultural purposes, and very partially so for pastoral ones, is that best adapted for the vine; better than the scoria hills could not be. Our rough stony scoria lands —lake those at the base of Mounts Eden and Wellington os an ex-ample-desolate as they look, rugged as they undoubtedly are, present some of the most naturally advantageous spots for the cultivation of the grape. On soils of this description the presence of stones upon the surface so far from being an obstruction becomes a benefit, keeping the land cool and moist, and protecting the roots from the excessive heat of the sun.

As a national benefit we can scarcely overrate its importance, forming as it would do a valuable article of export, and superseding also amongst ourselves the use of ardent spirits. Ihe introduction of a light and temperate wine into more general use would no r only’ he productive of health to a large portion of the community, but would effect a radical change in the public morals by exterminating the curse of the colonies, the use of alcoholic liquors, —would he attended by a general prosperity, and a proportionate diminution of crime. Were (he use o( ar lent spirits in New Zealand superseded (and siijeT'Ciled they can only he by’ the substitution of a more wholesome and palatable beverage) we should as a community be comparatively free Irom the only’ cause of those extremes of poverty from which spring the seeds of ignorance and crime. Destitution but for this cause would be unknown amongst us. In the fact that this Northern Island lies within the very same Southern parallel in which those portions of vine-growing countries, which are the most celebrated for their wines and fruit tire situated in the Northern, we have at once a strong indication of the fitness of the Province of Auckland for the culture of the vine.

M. Berneaud, one of the first authorities in these matters, in speaking of the climate and soil best adapted for the vine say’s, “It grows at Teneriffe degrees, and at Teheran, a large town of Persia, at the foot of the Faristhan mountains, 29 deg. 3G min.; these are the mostsoutherly points, where it gives the portable wine. Coblentz, at the confluence of the Rhine and the Moselle, is the most Northerly point where the culture and congenial situation enable the cultivators to make wines so justly esteemed. We should choose for it the dry 7 and light earth. The rocky and flinty ground bears superb vines, whereof the liquor has much fineness and lightness, &c., See., such are the vineyards of Marne, of Beaune, &c ”

Now have we not in New Zealand exactly tlie same description of soil! Land of exactly the same quality from whence was produced those celebrated wines so lovingly alluded to by that prince of von vioans, Horace. Have we not tracts of scoria, tracts of loose stony soil, and hill sides of a light dry soil of a moderate quality, for the same old poet tells us in his satires that “ the poorest lands produce the fattest wines 2” The only objection we have ever heard urged by any practical man against the climate of this Province, as regards its fitness for the production of good wine, has been that of the excessive heaviness of the dews which fall in this climate. Now perhaps the country of all others in the world, in which the heaviest dews are experienced is Egypt, where, as if to supply the deficiency of moisture in other respects, nature seems to have provided this supply. And was not Egypt celebrated for its vines 1 Was it not from Egypt that the Greeks first received the knowledge of its culture, and learned the art of preparing wine from its fruit \

Bacchus, according to the old poets, dwelt upon the hill-tops. Certain it is, that those vineyards situated upon the hill sides produce a wine superior to that grown upon the richer alluvial deposits below, where the quantity of the produce is only gained by the sacrifice of the quality. The soil selected for the vineyard should he well worked to render it deep, light and porus, and thoroughly drained that it may become at the same time moist an<l warm. To effect this the ground should, after having been thoroughly underdrained, be trenched in the autumn to the depth of 2 feet. If the ground be intermixed with small stones, these should by no means be picked out and laid aside as in the case of forming a hop garden, hut should be returned to the soil, and will serve to keep the ground more open and porous. Where the stones are large they should, if possible, be broken and mixed with the soil. Districts which abound with limestone are celebrated for the quality of the wine which they produce, but the vine will not thrive on cold wet, clay land. A direct eastern aspect, where the first rays of the morning sun strike upon the frosted vines, it to be avoided, though on this score we have less to fear than our European fellow wine growers : for frosts, floods, and storms are casualties to which those districts the most noted for their wines are frequently subject. The ground for the intended vineyard having been prepared ns directed above, the next consideration before planting is the choice of the sort of vine to be used. This is no trivial matter, for the soil that will suit one description of grape may he quite unsuited for the successful cultivation of another. The simple fact that in France, where winegrowing is indeed an institution, and where no less than five millions of acres are devoted to its growth, there are no less than fourteen hundred varieties of the vine, will show at once the impossibility of settling this question definitively. In Australia, where the introduction of the vine has been attended with success (you will not see a small farm in South Australia which has not at least its miniature vineyard) the following kinds are said to be amongst the most esteemed:—The Gomis, the different varieties of the Muscat, the Madeira, the Burgundy, and the Blue Portugal or Oporto Grape ; —of these perhaps the Gouais Blanch is the most successful.

On this point, then, no definite opinion can as yet be laid down for New Zealand ; but by procuring the better sorts of known kinds, and by planting out specimens of each, we may expect some day to arrive at a somewhat more determinate conclusion.

The cuttings which are intended to be planted out should be procured in June, and taken from healthy vines where the young wood is well ripened, cutting them in lengths of from sixteen to twenty inches. These cuttings should be tied up in bundles of 50, and laid perpendicularly in trenches, and the earth laid over them to one half of their length; in this state they will remain until the time for planting out, which in this country will be best performed about the first and second week in September. A large vineyard can be planted out in a very short time. The vines may either be planted in parallel rows, or in the quincunx form, as in the case with hops, by which latter method a larger number of plants at equal distances can be grown on an acre than by the former plan. The vines should be plantedjat intervals of five feet apart, and one stalk only in a place. Previously to planting out, each bundle of cuttings may be laid in water for a night, and the spurs and runners on each he neatly trimmed oil. They must be planted a foot deep in the ground, and cut down at once to within three inches of the surface, care being taken, however, that two buds upon each cutting are left above ground. A wooden dibble should be used for making the hole into which the catting is placed, a handful of light mould mixed with a little bonodust may be advantageously dropped in with

each cutting, and the holes he carefully closed up by the insertion of a pointed stick alongside, pressing the earth close up to the plant. Indeed in planting slips of all kinds ns well as those of vines, this method should be adopted. The principal reason of the failure of the striking of cuttings arises from the fact that no hole is made by a dibble for their reception, but the cutting is at once thrust into the soil, when, as is frequently the case, the bark at the extremity is rubbed back, and the cutting necessarily perishes. Only two shoots should be allowed to proceed from each stock, and these must be carefully and frequently tied from time to time during their growth to the stake which has been fixed alongside the stock at the time when the buds began first to shoot. All spurs and lower shoots which may commence to grow must as they appear be picked off by hand. The stakes for the support of the vines will require to be about five feet out of the ground;—Ti-tree sticks of from three to five inches in circumference will be sufficiently strong. We cannot too frequently urge upon the notice of the more intelligent class of settlers, who are and have been for the last four years peopling our out-districts, the value of turning some portion of their attention to the growth of products which, like the vine and the hop and many others, are so eminently suited to our soil and climate, and of which, in common with a few other favoured portions of the world, we enjoy as it were a comparative monopoly. The British farmer in New Zealand and Australia remains too doggedly by the old habits and instincts of the country which he has left, and forgets that however profitable may he the growth of the cereals to which he has been accustomed, he has now within his power the production of a class of plants which, from the circumscribed limits within which they can be successfully grown, return to the cultivator a far more handsome profit. l'he present is the very time for the commencement of the formation of a vineyard. In a future number we shall enlarge further uponthe dressing, pruning the gathering and after-cul tare of an established vineyard. (No. 10.) FIRST SETTLEMENT ON OPEN LANDS. The want of something like a manual of agricultural operations for the use of new settlers, has always been felt among us. The reversion of the seasons, the variations of soil, and the difference of the various systems of carrying on farm operations, has proved a perplexing question to many at their first outset, and it has been to supply this deficiency that we have in the present series of articles and in others endeavoured to make clear the way for beginners. So much depends upoa the amount of capital to be employed, the nature of the laud, the distance from water-carriage or a market, and upon other circumstances, that a separate scale and system is necessary for each. It is only by laying down general principles, and leaving each one to collate from these, as the peculiar circumstances of his case may happen to require, that we are able to enter upon the subject at all. We have lately had an opportunity of observing for ourselves the results of the last few years immigration, visiting the various districts from Auckland to the North Cajie; whatever we may have heard, and in some slight measure been induced to give car to, with regard to there being alarge percentage of dissatisfied settlers, has been entirely dispelled. Everywhere there seems to be the same reliance of success, and it is worthy of notice that in most of those instances where the old hands, the men of twenty years’ standing and upwards in the country, happen to be surrounded by newcomers that the latter have left them far Indiind in advancement, even where their period of settlement lias not extended over more than a couple of years.

A large, a very large proportion of the new settlers arc men of substance and education, as well of energy and determination, men who will not be content to sit down for the remainder of their lives in the same state of discomfort, which they must as new settlers, necessarily experience for a time, but will in advancing their own interests as surely advance the general welfare of the country. All that New Zealand wants to render it one of the finest countries in the Australasian group is population —and we look on each one of these successful pioneers of civilization as the nucleus around which his friends and connections from home will rally, when they receive from him the detail of his experience, and an impartial account of the advantages to be derived in choosing this Province as a field for emigration over those, which though they may here and there afford successful oportunities for amassing rapid fortunes, are unfitted, on account of the enervating effects of climate upon the constitution of their native born inhabitants, to become the permanent home of Englishmen. One error into which very many of our new settlers have fallen is the notion that it was unsafe to purchase cattle at once, and run them upon their waste land ami the unoccupied lands of the Crown and of private individuals around them, on the grounds either that they would become wild, and so be jierhaps altogether lost, or that they would run great risk of being destroyed by eating the Tupaki which grows abundantly in some districts. Now, from particular experience, we unhesitatingly declare, that in giving way to these notions, the new settler is losing one of his chief sources of profit afld comfort. Ask the settlers on the Wade, the Mahurangi and Matakana and other of the earlier settlements, in what position they would have been had they waited to commence stock-farming until they had either enclosed paddocks or pasture-land! Of course if cattle arc brought to a strange place, turned out nncarcd for and left altogether to themselves, many will become wild enough, but, if herded by day for the first week or fortnight, and brought home regularly every night to the stockyard, there will be no fear but that they will soon become thoroughly domesticated to the place. As to the danger from Tupaki , happy is the man whose land produces it in such excess. Any ill results may be avoided in districts where it does prevail by using the precaution of purchasing cattle bred and reared upon a bush run, which very seldom cat of it so immoderately as to become injured by it. At the same time the green Tup'iki may bo easily destroyed, for where land is sufficient y rich to grow this plant in abundance, there is sure to be with it a sufficient undergrowth of ferns, &c., to feed a running lire. In all eases it is inadvisable for an up-country settler, who has nothing but bush feed, to purchase in town cattle of whose habits he knows nothing whatever, and which may for aught he knows, have been taken from the luxuriant grass paddocks of Epsom or the Tatnaki. One advantage at anyratc he jiosscsscs, for that mortality among calves, the result of penurious shortsightedness which takes place every winter in the paddocks about Auckland, is unknown in thcjbush, and this more than counterbalances the possibility of losing a cow or bullock in a swamp. The stockyard into which the cattle are driven at night, if it has not a covered shed attached to it, should at least have its sides drawn with Ti tree scrub so as to break the violence of the wind and afford some shelter to the cattle, without which, during bleak south-westerly weather especially, they would become liable to injury from exposure to cold. At the first commencement, and while as yet the settler has neither straw nor fodder, the yard should he littered with green flax, rushes, or even fonts though this last is the least useful for the composition of manure on account of its power of resisting decomposition. Green food too may be. sown at most times of the year for the soiling of milch cows and other stock, even on new ground which has been hut lately broken up, provided guano or other artificial manure he used for the purpose of forcing an early and rapid growth. From February to December, oats, maize, sarghum, and Cape barley may he advantageously'sown for this purpose; and from July to December turnips and rape in addition. Such, land as contains the least font, although there may have been upon it perhaps a heavy growth of flax, tupaki, or

other rubbish, should be chosen foTth e green food where it is wished to obtain of broken up ground, and artificial manure H however naturally rich the soil. Too paid amongst us towards the growth of the soiling of cattle, and the consequent hj manure thereby, for the production of potatoe crops to which the farmer must 6 chief source of returns. Without a s 88 V food the trouble and expense of an u ? ° f daily is kept up where, if such a were adopted, the same number of cows ■ ° f considerable return and fair profit—of cultivating so many acres is annually t one half the gross receipts of wliat expected were manure made upon the n • y ** applied to the land; and since the nnmamwt % leaves a margin of profit, it stands to reason extra ton of potatoes, every bushel of gmin evei ) this manufacture and economy of manure • ranch extra gain upon the present system’ * | Objections to the use of turnips and cabba™ feeding of milch cows are urged on account o^ ' A and smell imparted by them to the milk and For this there is a remedy as simple as it •" which consists solely in observing the followinl One quarter of a pound of saltpetre is to be in a gallon of water, and bottled off f™. 80 1 iur rK, value of a small wine glass full of this liquid ** into every four gallons of new milk as it i s p, the dairy will entirely remove nil taint. * In first commencing the cultivation of a open land, bullocks will in all cases be found* 08 * useful than horses. The former will, when n gather their own food, and, if worked five davs"' week, maintain themselves in rood w™-!-:* W , . . b "orhing or/U their pace, too, is more suited to the breaking ” rough land, which may contain many impedim the plough beyond the unevenness of its surfa^ 15 carting fencing and firewood from the bush thev be taken on rough roads and in places where i t ’ be utterly impossible to manage horses, Should accident happen to the oue, the knife can be r ** to, and the value of the beef will in a rrmnt , , , - nieaam make up the loss,—where, in the other case tl. carcase would be useless. But the great disadvaataa in commencing with horses is the certainty that some time the whole of their food must be purchase Afterwards, when the farm is self-supporting there arc grass paddocks,well-tilled stubbles to pi aag L and good roads, bullocks will, as elsewhere, disappe® before the more economical labor of the horse teaa. But for new-comers to suppose that we are all asleep and that they can do with horses that which ou| experience tells us wc must do with oxen, is only » a s ime a superiority over one and all, which a linj. reflection might cure them of.

Although crops may be forced from newly broken-up ; land by the use of artificial manures, yet the best and cheapest way to overcome the natural acidity of th I soil is to turn it over and leave it for some month I exposed to the action of the sun, and the oxygen of the f atmosphere. A quicker method of obtaining the saint result would be produced by the use of lime —htn this can only be done where the material of shells sad firewood is near at hand, and is within the reach of comparatively few. The breaking up of fern lands for fallowing—that is, to be sown with wheat in the Jfoj of 1862, or with potatoes or spring grain in the spriaj of the same year —should commence at once, now tha the land is sufficiently softened by the rain, ami but continue to be performed when the state of the | weather will allow throughout the winter and spring; j ‘ until, in fact, the summer heat and drought render tbe I ground too hard for the cattle. The land should be t harrowed with, not across, the seam as soon as the | iliying weather sets in, and be cross-ploughed about Christmas time. During the summer, if intended for 11 wheat, it must be broken down fine with the harrows,- f \ and about May, the time for sowing, be ploughed t h i third time for the seed furrow. Care must be taken, where the land lies low and flat, that the ridges are not j more than twelve or fifteen feet in width, and that the furrows are carefully cleaned out to the depth of th» loose soil, so as to give a free access to the rain which I will fall during the winter. Where the land is in- I tended for spring crops, each as oats, barley, potatoes, turnips, &c., the land must not he harrowed down foe [ after cross-ploughing, unless it is intended to plough > j third time before winter, but remain as rough and I ojvcn as possible during the winter months, —care lib j wise being taken that the furrows are drawn, and no L water allowed to lodge on the land. The object is that f when the soil is pulverised, and becomes soaked by th; If heavy rains, the atmosphere—which is the principal f drying agent in the winter—has no opportanitf of I searching into and evaporating the moisture which it does quickly and effectually when the soil ii left in a rough open state. When intended for oats,which are best sown in July and August (if sown in June, though they ripen earlier, and may produce as heavy a crop, they are liable to loss, on account of the ease with which early sown oats shake , —and, if son in September, they are liable to lie caught in a dir season by the drought, and to turn out a light crop)advantage can be taken, where the land is of a moderately dry nature, of such fine weather as we generally have at intervals during the winter for getting in the seed; but, where the land is heavy ami wet, the ground must he broken down and the seel furrow prepared as for wheat before the setting in of . the wet season. In all eases, however good the land, the benefit of ever so small a dressing of artificial j manure, such as hones or guano, will he felt on new land: indeed there is this peculiarity, noticed by man* in the soil and climate of New Zealand —that nowhere is manure applied with more advantage, for a smaller dressing here will produce a larger return than a heavy dressing will effect in other countries. We shall .rota time to time in this series of papers enlarge farther upon these subjects, which arc to our new settlers matters of everyday importance.