Watering at planting is necessary only when the land is parched with drought or in regions in which irrigation is practiced. When necessary, water should be used liberally, at least a gallon or two to a vine. After the earth has been firmed about the roots and the hole is nearly filled, the water should be poured in and the hole filled without more firming. Under dry weather conditions, some prefer to puddle the roots; that is, to dip them in thin mud and plant with the mud adhering. In making the puddle, loose loam and not sticky clay is used, as clay may bake so hard as to injure the roots. With puddling, as with watering, the surface soil should be left loose and soft without traces of the puddling below. Manure or fertilizer about the roots or even in the hole are not necessary or even desirable. If the soil is to be enriched at all at planting time, the fertilizer should be spread on the surface to be cultivated in or to have its food elements leak down as rains fall. In land in which the providential design for grapes is plainly manifested, the vine at no time responds heartily to fertilizers, the good of stable manure probably coming for the most part from its effects on the texture and water-holding capacity of the soil. The newly set plant is not in need of outside nourishment; to put rank manure or strong commercial fertilizers about the roots of a young newly set vine is plant infanticide. CARE OF YOUNG VINES Virgil calls the period in the life of the vine between the setting and the first vintage, the "tender nonage," and tells us that at this time the vines need careful rearing; so they do, now as then, American grapes as well as the grapes of ancient Rome. Fortunately, any departure from normal well-being is easily told in the grape, for the color of the leaf is as accurate an index to the health and vigor of the vine as the color of the tongue or the beat of the pulse in man. A change of color from the luxuriant green of thrifty grape foliage, especially the yellow hue indicating that the leaf-green is not functioning properly, suggests that the vines are sick or need nursing in some detail of care. When all goes well, however, the amazing energy of Nature is nowhere better seen among plants than in the growth of the grape, so that much of the care is in the use of the knife; in fact, as we shall see, the grape almost lives by the knife the first two years out. _The first year._