If you have a garden - or even if you have only a tiny plot of trampled-down, weed-infested soil - you can grow the fruits to make your own wine.

A plot measuring twelve feet by twelve will support three blackcurrant bushes and two gooseberry bushes, or two of each and two redcurrant bushes or some loganberry or raspberry canes. A plot twice that size or, say, thirty feet by twenty, which is really quite small, has enormous possibilities for growing each of the fruits just mentioned, and in addition rhubarb in quite large quantities.

I shall always remember a family who live just off the Holloway Road, London; they had a small garden with a few flowers in it, the main strip being grass, and pretty poor grass at that. Today they grow redcurrants, loganberries, raspberries, blackcurrants, rhubarb and grapes. The wines they make with these fruits they serve with meals or sip as they watch television at the comfort of their own fireside. They also have an elder­berry tree which I gave them as a cutting. From this they make twenty-six or more bottles of wine a year. From the other fruits they make between thirty and fifty bottles of wine each season according to the weight of their crops. Their worst year produced fifty-seven bottles, their best year eighty-nine bottles - all at practically no cost at all and with precious little equip­ment. As for the time spent in making the wine - just an hour or so when the crops were ripe.

There are countless thousands of tiny plots of soil like theirs throughout London and its suburbs alone; how many more there are in seaside towns and indus­trial areas is anybody's guess - there must be millions. And whatever their conditions right now, all could very easily be turned into Vineyards'. Some may be closed in by high walls and fences, but this does not matter provided they get a few hours' sunshine on those rare days when the sun does happen to show itself.

Your fruits may not be of show quality, but this does not matter either. I have made first-class ports and burgundies from fruits grown under what experts would call impossible conditions.

The advantages of home-grown fruits cannot be over­emphasized. Not only are we able to prepare for making the wine at the right time, but we are also able to estimate the amount of fruit we shall have available. Apart from this, our fruit will be in the best possible condition for the job in hand and it will have cost us practically nothing.

Last summer, a friend of mine made two gallons of blackcurrant wine. He bought the currants at a shop and they were pretty badly bashed about by the time he got them home. Together with the sugar the wine cost him about 22s. per gallon - or about 4s. 6d. a bottle. My ports and burgundies cost me about 4s. 6d. a gallon - or about II   d. a bottle.

But apart from these very important points, my fruit was fresh, clean and free from the germs and dirt normally picked up during marketing, which, as we have seen, cause a lot of trouble during the making of the wine.

The varieties of fruits listed are not necessarily the latest, but rather those that have stood the test of time and come through with flying colors.

If, when you have gathered the fruit, you find you have not enough to make the amount of wine you had planned, do not let this prevent you getting under way.

You can always begin with a pound or so less than the recipe calls for and add more to the fermenting must a few days later when a second picking is possible. So that mistakes do not occur, begin with the right amount of water and label the fermenting vessel 'Add another pound of fruit', or whatever quantity is needed to make up the full amount. And if it so happens that you haven't enough of one kind of fruit to make as much wine as you want, do not let this bother you either, for there are recipes in this book that allow for a mixture of fruits.

Certain fruits are more suitable for making certain types of wine than others are. It is as hopeless to try to make port from gooseberries as it would be to try to grow apples on a plum tree. Therefore we must use blackcurrants, plums, elderberries and such-like for ports and burgundies, and the lighter-colored fruits such as pears, raspberries, red- and whitecurrants and white grapes for light table wines, both sweet and dry, and dessert wines. Rhubarb and gooseberries are very suitable for making into champagne-style wines, and ripe gooseberries - those that have been left on the bushes to turn red or yellow according to variety - will make good imitations of sherry.

Manures and leaves and so on are out of the question for townspeople, so the first step for those who cannot get anything of this sort is to build up a supply of humus ready for digging in either at the time of digging the plot or when the trees or bushes are planted. Even those able to obtain small amounts of manure and leaves should save everything they can for the compost pit. Chemical fertilizers play an important part in modern gardening, but these cannot put into the soil the organic matter it needs if it is to remain healthy.

Worms - the invisible assets of the garden - do in­estimable good below the surface of the soil, but they need something to live on. And remember that a soil without worms is poor and unhealthy.

Compost, apart from encouraging the activity of worms, gives the plants the organic matter they need, besides retaining moisture during dry spells. Regular digging-in of compost during spring will quickly change a poor soil to a good rich one capable of producing strong healthy growth and heavy crops. The little trouble taken in the early stages will repay you a hundred times over.

Dig a pit about three feet each way and three feet deep; if you have a few stones or bricks to line the bottom, so much the better, for this will assist drainage. A pit this size will be quite big enough for a small garden. Anything may be thrown into that pit: spent flowers from the house, all cabbage and potato peelings from the kitchen, tea-leaves, torn-up magazines and newspapers, straw, lawn mowing, leaves and spent flowers from other parts of the garden - in fact, any­thing and everything that will rot.

If any kind of manure is available - rabbit, poultry or stable manure - however small the amount, this too should go into the pit as it will help to rot down the other stuff. If you or your neighbor keep poultry, so that you have a regular supply of chicken manure, it is better to dry it out and keep it aside for hoeing in during the spring. Only put a very little of this manure round each plant, as it is very powerful and can do great harm. just a dusting is enough. In its wet state it is far less potent. Cleanings from pigeon lofts, when dry, are even more potent than chicken manure, and should be used more sparingly still.

A valuable source of supply of compost matter is a friendly greengrocer willing to put aside cabbage trim­mings for you. Remember that you cannot have too much of this stuff.

When you have a layer about four inches thick at the bottom of your compost pit, sprinkle lime over the surface and then a two-inch layer of soil and tread it down. Then start again with a fresh layer of refuse and then more lime and soil and so on until the pit is full. Finish it off with a layer of earth and leave it until digging or planting time comes along. You haven't finished yet; start another pit so that when the first is used you will have another in the making. This will repay you well, I assure you.

Flock mattresses and such-like should be put aside for pulling to pieces and burying under the spot chosen for planting fruit bushes. Broken-up bones buried in the same fashion will fertilize the soil for years to come. Always try to have compost etc. available for mulching bushes in the spring. A mulch is merely a layer of com­post, or leaves or lawn-mowing spread round and underneath the bushes and along rows of raspberry canes or loganberries. This helps to keep the roots cool during hot weather and helps to conserve moisture, besides fertilizing the fine hairy roots near the surface. The mulch is usually forked into the surface during late summer or early autumn.

Fair results will be obtained without a great deal of after-attention, but for the best results we must not only prepare our soil well but also take that little after­care that makes so much difference to the size and quality of our crops - and therefore the amount and quality of the wines we make.

I have mentioned that I have made first-class ports and burgundies from fruits grown under what experts would call impossible conditions. The reader might well argue that skill in making the wine will make up for poorness of ingredients. This is not so, for I have seen top-quality fruits turned into most disappointing wines. Good-quality fruits and a reasonable amount of care in making the wine are all that is needed; and some good wines can even be made from quite poor fruits. But it would not be untrue to say that the quality and the amount of wine you will make later on will depend on the care you take in preparing the soil now.

Whatever the condition of your soil, it can be im­proved immensely by a thorough digging now and a little attention from time to time. If your garden is already cultivated, you are more than halfway there; and if you are already growing fruits you are nine-tenths of the way to drinking those finished ports, burgundies and such-like.

On the other hand, if your plot - like so many others - is trampled down and apparently useless, you will have to start from scratch. However, immense satis­faction - pride, even - will be yours when those bottles of wine are ready to drink and when you recall that it wasn't so long ago when you were rather ashamed of that patch of ground you had been intending to dig up for years.

Starting from scratch has many advantages, too; it allows you to plan the layout without worrying about Auntie's London Pride or that azalea Granddad put in and which never does flower anyway, but which is sacred to the whole family simply because Granddad put it there.

The first step with an uncultivated plot is, of course, to dig it. Dig deeply and incorporate any leaves or com­post you happen to have and, when you have finished, spread a little lime over the surface.

A month later, rake this in and dress the whole plot with bonemeal at the rate of a quarter-pound per square yard. Then fork this in lightly and leave the plot to the elements. Rain, frost, snow, wind and sunshine all put something into the soil; it is best then if the first dig­ging is done in late summer or early autumn so that the soil is ready for late winter planting.

Considering Possibilities

The method of growing each fruit is described separ­ately under the appropriate heading, but here it is as well to consider possibilities.

If you have a wall or wooden fence facing south your luck is in - provided it gets a bit of sunshine each day. Grapes, raspberries and loganberries can be grown against it. If a wall or fence is not available these three fruits may be grown on wires stretched across the garden, taking up practically no room at all.

Vertical stakes at four-foot intervals (six foot if they are concrete) embedded in the soil along a path or across the garden may be connected by strong wires and the trees, vines or canes tied in against them.

The first wire should be eighteen inches above the soil and subsequent wires two feet above each other. The stakes should project six feet above the soil.

The same principle is applied to a wall or fence. Fruits grown in this fashion leave room for other fruits such as blackcurrants and gooseberries. When planting remember that all fruits like sunshine; do not plant tall stuff so that it takes the sun from the shorter bushes and low-growing fruits such as strawberries and rhubarb.

Liquid Manures

There are many ways of making these valuable feeding materials; probably the easiest of all is to obtain a pro­prietary brand and follow the directions on the bottle. Alternatively, if small amounts of stable or farmyard manures are available and also a tank, it is a good plan to soak the manure in water for a few days and then pour off the water and dilute this to the color of straw before feeding it to the bushes and canes. This will also help to rot down compost if a little is sprayed, or sprinkled from a watering-can, over the top of the pit.

This should never be used stronger than advised, though it can be used in some strength on the compost heap. If fed to the plants when insufficiently diluted it may burn the roots. Never feed the bushes or canes when the soil is dry. Wait for an evening's rain or a heavy shower, and wait for rain to soak into the soil before you feed them.

If you cannot wait for rain, soak the ground well with a hose and feed a few hours later. If you happen to live near a friendly farmer he may be willing to let you have a gallon of the drainings from the manure heap occasion­ally. This is very strong and must be diluted to the color of light straw before using.

Regular applications of compost and feeding with liquid manure is every bit as good as annual dung spreading.

Chemical Fertilizers

At Rothamsted, Hertfordshire, in 1843, John Bennet Lawes founded the first agricultural research station in the world. He and his assistant, Gilbert, experimented to find out exactly what plants needed to make them grow; and it may be said that together they laid the foundations upon which has been built our present-day agricultural knowledge.

It is surprising that in this age of enlightenment there are people who will put up with poor crops rather than use chemical fertilizers. They cannot be convinced that chemical fertilizers merely add to the soil what would ordinarily be there if they dunged their land each year.

In the good old days a load of farmyard manure was delivered for next to nothing to anybody who wanted it. But there are many more gardens these days and much less manure. Plants cannot take up solids; thus, whatever is dug into the soil must become liquid before the plants can use it. Solid manures in any form - scrap leather, wool-shoddy, fish waste, dung, etc. - take a long time to become available to the plants. And the only difference between natural manures and chemical fertilizers is that one is produced naturally, the other artificially.

Chemical fertilizers, especially in liquid form, are taken up by the plants almost at once, for science has merely put into bottles and packets what would ordin­arily be delivered by the farm cart. These bottled and packaged stuffs carry directions which prevent over- or under-feeding, and ensure heavy healthy crops. Com­post and other waste matter dug into the soil have the same moisture-retaining properties as farmyard manure: feeding with chemical fertilizers merely makes up the deficiency.

That, broadly speaking, is all there is to it; but make no mistake about it, a great debt is owed by mankind to John Bennet Lawes.

Are You Ready To Move Onto The Next Lesson? Click Here...