Pruning. 303 



steady, even supply of strong, vigorous fruit buds within convenient limits on 

 whatever fruit tree, plant or vine you may be dealing with. 



This sounds simple enough, but to successfully carry it out requires plenty 

 of study and thinking. Most every one knows of the necessity of providing 

 new bearing wood each year on the grape vine, but many do not apparently 

 realize that it is just as important to provide the same new bearing wood on 

 the plum, the prune, and the other tree fruits. 



Take the strawberry, even. Next to good cultivation the pruning is the most 

 important part. The first year we must prune off runners and blossoms that 

 we may grow a strong plant full of fruit buds for the next year's crop. When 

 the crop is gathered we must, for best results, at once prune off all the old 

 leaves and tops to stimulate a strong growth for the following season. Last 

 summer I saw at Mr. W. S. Falling's place at Mt. Tabor (now Portland) a 

 patch of berries handled by this method that were bearing their sixth crop, 

 and a fine crop, too, and he was planning to let them stand another year. 



Currants and gooseberries bear best on two-year-old wood, and such should 

 be at all times provided by cultivating in bush form, removing the old canes 

 and letting new ones take their places. Nothing else is required save topping 

 the new shoots at the desired height. 



The methods of training grapes are so numerous that I shall not even 

 attempt to enumerate them. The sub.iect is so big that Mr. L. 11. Bailey has 

 devoted an entire volume, soon to be published, to it. But the general prin- 

 ciples of pruning must be the same, no matter what the style of training. 

 Crape training is much confused because people do not distinguish that it 

 involves two sets of ideas, the pruning to remove superfluous wood and the 

 training into some set form. All intelligent pruning of the grape rests upon 

 the fact that the fruit is borne in a few clusters near the base of the growing 

 shoots of the season, and which spring from wood of last year's growth. As 

 the grade will bear only on the wood of the previous year's growth the problem 

 is to provide this at the point where the fruit is wanted, and obviously in the 

 vineyard this point must be as near the head of the vine as possible. While 

 the grape will yield most readily of all fruit bearing plants to the control of 

 man, yet none will escape more quickly when given an opportunity. If a vine 

 grows a shoot fifteen feet long one year, the strongest shoots the next year will 

 be near the tip end of it, and so on until the bearing wood is so far away that 

 it must necessarily miss one crop of fruit waiting for the sap to travel to it 

 from the root. 



My own system of pruning is the well-known one of cane renewal, trained 

 on a wire trellis. While this is more work and expense than some others, I 

 believe it pays for it in many ways. It is easier to keep the bearing wood close 

 to the head than by any of the methods of spur pruning, and by a little careful 

 watching it is easy to secure a new shoot from farther down on the old wood 

 or from the ground, train it to the lower wire and in two or three years have 

 a vigorous new arm, allowing the removal of the old, and so on imtil the entire 

 vine is renewed. This can be repeated as often as necessary. If new shoots fail 

 to come where needed, they can be forced by cutting off an arm of the trunk, 

 leaving a little more bearing wood at some other point to balance up. 



The best time to prune grapes in this latitude is in February, but any time 

 between the falling of the leaves in the autumn and the start of sap flow in 

 the spring will do. Summer pruning, if done at all, should be delayed as late 

 as possible, then cutting off only a small portion of the ends of the shoots. 



In pruning the prune tree I believe it is .iust necessary to keep this idea 

 of renewal of fruit bearing wood in view as it is with tlie grape. The only 

 difference is that the prune needs renewal only once in ten or twelve years, 

 instead of annually, as witli the grape. I know of several prune orchards 

 twelve or fifteen years old where the trees are bearing little or nothing solely 

 lor the reason that they have not been properly pruned, and the fruit spurs 



