GERMAN VINE CULTIVATION.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LI, Issue 15513, 21 January 1914, Page 12

GERMAN VINE CULTIVATION.

FIGHTING INSECT PESTS.

Tv a picturesque description of a tour through some of the wine-making districts of Germany by Herr Henry A. Sauerbach some account is given of the methods adopted for destroying insect pests. In Oppenheim, says the writer, "we saw a new device for protecting the grapes from the cochylis. wnoßc cocoons have cost the country many millions. The grapes were wrapped up in a flimsy tissue paper, and the owner of the property told us that the insects had thereby been warded off effectively, while keeping off the sun rays had done no harm whatever to the plant. There are different ways to fight these insect pests. On the Moselle the schoolchildren turn out in the evening, when the butterfly swarms, with large sticky fans capable of gluing a great many insects at a stroke, for they are very frequent. In the Rheingau the trap-pots are far more in use, earthenware or glass receptacles containing as bait some fermenting apple jelly, stale beer, etc., which the cochylis and its second generations, the cudemis, like- very much. The bait goes on fermenting in the stomach of the insect, killing it in a very short time. " It is extraordinary how many diseases and animals are nefarious to the vine. As a matter of fact, there is no plant in botany which has so many foes, and wero it not for the fact that the plant possesses a great longevity and regenerating power, wine-growing would have gone to the wall long ago. The most dreadful enemy, of course, is' the phylloxera, which has" just made its appearance again at Oestrich, in the Jheingau. For about five years an infected plant remains undetected as a rule. . . The vine presents a crippled appearance, with undeveloped foliage, not to apeak of the absence of grapes, and on digging it out one finds the characteristic tumours on the roots caused by the sting of the lame. Generally the whole root is rotten. Though the ravages of the insect have cost the German wine-growers something like £2,500,000 since the 70's, when the phylloxera was supposed to have been imported from America, while 400,000, i,jO francs will not cover its damage in France, no remedy against it has been discovered up to the present, and circumscription of the infected area and eradication of the plants is the only possible means of preventing it spreading. This has been prescribed by German laws, by the way, and is carried out with such severity that the vigncroii in whose property the typical circular " reblausherd" appears is frequently ruined. The law appoints a phylloxera committee, whose duties consist in locating the infested area, eradicating the vines in it and the neighbouring propertics, and disinfecting the vineyard with sulphuric carbonium. For the subsequent six years the property has to lie fallow. It is interesting to know that England, though not going in for wine-growing, was got phylloxera laws on account of the extensive cultivation of hothouso grapes. Saplings of vines from there may only be imported into Germany after thorough disinfection/'