352 STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



some others with the hoe, and less can be done with the cultivator. For this 

 I set posts eight feet apart; saw them square at the top before setting, and pet 

 hyaline, lay 2x6 inch blocks across the top, and fasten them with spikes; 

 then nail lG-foot strips on the ends of these blocks; then nail, as may be 

 needed, a half length of lath across. 



I see that there is some controversy about the distance apart at which grape- 

 vines should be planted, and I know two growers who, having planted in rows 

 eight feet apart, the vines eight feet apart in the row, have eventually dug up 

 every other vine in the row, and claim to have thereby increased the yield of 

 fruit. That the increased yield should be the result of this process, if the vines 

 are trained by the ordinary hap-hazard method, I can easily believe, without 

 admitting any benefit from the increased room for the roots or vines. 



The natural tendency of the vine is to keep increasing its length from year 

 to year, bearing its fruit further and further from the stock, leaving at the 

 base bare wood, constantly increasing in length. All pruning has for its main 

 object the keeping of the vine within the prescribed bounds, and the occupying 

 of the trellis with bearing instead of bare wood. Is it not possible that the 

 thwarting of nature in this matter is one of the causes of rot and mildew so 

 prevalent in places? I do not assert this as a fact, but I could give my reasons 

 for believing it to be so. 



To avoid this necessity for short pruning to prevent bare wood, I have hit 

 upon the following plan, which I intend to put in practice at the next fall 

 pruning with my three-year-old Concords and other rank-growing sorts. We 

 will suppose a trellis of four bars or wires and two main canes. Tie these two 

 canes to the lower bar 12 to 14 inches apart, then fasten the upper end of each 

 to the third bar at an angle that just allows them to reach that point, both 

 running parallel with each other in the same direction to form the angle, the 

 acuteness of which Avill depend on the length of the canes. Allow these main 

 canes to increase in length from year to year, two or more feet, giving them a 

 more acute angle as their length increases ; prune to short spurs ; their length 

 depending on your experience and judgment. By this process you will see that 

 the bearing wood of one vine overlaps the bare wood of its neighbor, occupying 

 all the trellis, and year by year approaching nearer a horizontal position. 



I am aware that this plan is open to criticism, and that there may be found 

 objections that I have not foreseen; but objections maybe made to all the 

 plans I have ever seen, and the most forcible objection is that to carry them 

 out needs more care and close attention than one man in a hundred has the 

 patience to give them. I shall follow the same plan with my flat trellises — 

 train all the canes one way, the way prevailing wind blows as nearly as may be, 

 and let the fruit-bearing part overlap the barren part, thus giving nature more 

 of her own way. 



I propose now to give some of the observations that have led me to this plan. 

 The first specimen of grape pruning and training that I ever saw was attended 

 to year after year by an old man, who had been much in foreign countries and 

 who pruned close to a single cane trained horizontally some four feet high, 

 giving it all the length that his limited area could afford. The varieties were 

 Isabella and Catawba, his latitude Western New York, and his success satis- 

 factory to him. In sight from where I now sit, I have a single old Concord 

 vine trained on a trellis 12 feet long and 8 feet high. In the fall pruning the 

 bearing wood is brought to any point where there is the most room for it, up, 

 down or horizontally. The trellis abuts upon a fence, and some five years 

 since I trained a rampant shoot upon the fence, giving it all its length. It has 



