142 ANNUAL REPORT OF NEW-YORK 



among cultivators in various parts of our country. What is especial- 

 ly needful is that such experiments be on a proper scale, and in the 

 hands of intelligent men who shall make a wise selection of 

 bases from which to propagate, and of the modes of procedure. 



b. Trimming the grape. — 1. The wild grape is never trimmed, 

 and does not bear fully until transcending its natural supports, 

 its limbs are permitted to hang down. Thus also most ordinary fruit 

 trees do not bear fully until their branches become slightly pro- 

 cumbent. I do not here argue that we should never trim the 

 grape vine. Few ordinary cultivators have adequate supports 

 for large vines. Indeed, in this climate, nearly all the varieties 

 of grapes yet cultivated, must be treated as exotics, if cultivated 

 in the usual manner. They need to be laid down every winter, 

 at least the risk of injury to the vines, during many winters, is 

 such as to render it wise to do so. Such a course is inconsistent 

 with training them upon trees and hedges or broad artificial 

 supports. 



By trimming the grape, in the usual extreme manner, we inter- 

 fere constantly with its integrity as a perfect plant, destroying the 

 natural balance between the top and roots. Such interference 

 makes its growth, in the early and latter part of the season, un- 

 equal, and exposes a comparatively larger portion of tender 

 tissues, in the early part of the summer, to climatic changes than 

 would be the case in a more natural mode of treatment. Hence, 

 too, a comparatively larger amount of its entire tissues is exposed 

 in a tender state, to the severity of the succeeding winter. Expe- 

 rience largely shows that the plant, whether herbaceous or woody, 

 which has comparatively the largest amount of mature, or nearly 

 mature tissues, will survive severe climatic changes with most 

 safety; the older tissues seeming to operate as a basis of health to 

 those which are younger. Hence it is that a grafted grape the 

 first season after it (the graft) is set, suffers more than it does the 

 second summer of its growth. The admitted fact that the most 

 of our grapes, when trimmed on the renewing system, are less 

 liable to mildew than when spur trimmed, is not opposed to these 

 views, since such a mode of training is made necessary from the 

 incongeniality of our climate, acting probably on the deteriorated 

 constitution of the variety so treated. In the more perfect climate 

 of a green house such renewing system of pruning is not needful. 



