50 • BOAED OF AGRICULTURE. [Jan. 



I have no luck at all in trimming that. If I let the vines 

 run by themselves, they give me good crops ; but whenever I 

 have pruned, it has been at a loss of fruit. I was through 

 Mr. Dickerman's vineyard this fall, and he told me that he 

 had found precisely the same result. He said he was obliged 

 to let some vines take care of themselves ; they had a little 

 of the wild Indian in them, and it was necessary to allow 

 them to take to brush occasionally, in order to produce good 

 fruit. 



Mr. Hale. The only Rogers No. 4 we have runs over the 

 broadside of the house, and bears well. It goes without any 

 pruning whatever. 



Mr. Gold. When in California this past summer, I 

 noticed, on some of the best fruit farms, that the foreign 

 grapes were trimmed to a single stump, two or three feet 

 high, and bore their fruit close to the ground. On those 

 same farms American grapes were also cultivated, on trellises, 

 and a pretty liberal growth of vine allowed. They said they did 

 not admit of the same short pruning as the foreign grapes ; 

 that their system was entirely different with regard to the 

 Isabella, Catawba, Concord, and others, than with the foreign 

 varieties that they were growing upon those same fruit farms. 



Mr. Blot. That is the information I would like to get. I 

 know of foreign fruit farms where they raise grapes, and they 

 cut some of them as low as two feet and a half. That is the 

 Chasselas ; and they hold themselves, without any support. 

 But in this climate, is it not better to let them grow seven or 

 eight feet ? Would we not have more and better grapes, and 

 would not the vines last longer, and be more thrifty? 



Mr. Gold. Our New Jersey friends ought to answer this 

 question for us. 



Mr. Blot. I have seen grape-vines trimmed here by for- 

 eigners, who had just come over from the old country, and 

 they trimmed them down to four or five feet, and invariably 

 the fruit has been poor. I would like to know from some one 

 who has had more experience than I have had, if our Ameri 

 can grapes do not require a little longer trimming ? 



