MICHIGAN' STATE POMOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 169 



pressed down. If an inch of Avell-rotted manure is spread 

 oyer this it will be beneficial, especially if it should become 

 necessary to water the plants. This coyering will keep the 

 surface from baking. 



TRAINING AND PRUNING. 



Only one shoot should be allowed to grow the first season. 

 This should be kept tied to the stake ; the side-shoots, or lat- 

 terals, after making four or fiye leayes, pinched back to within 

 one bud of the main stem, and repeated as often as the bud 

 left has made a like number of leayes, always leaying one 

 beyond or forward of the last stopping, the object being to 

 develop one well-ripened cane four to six feet long. If you 

 succeed in doing this by next fall, you haye laid the founda- 

 tion of success; and it cayi be done every time with good two- 

 years-old vines. Pinch off the top of the cane early in Sep- 

 tember; this will check the upward growth and mature the 

 wood, and soon as the leaves fall fill up the hole with the earth 

 taken out in the spring. The roots are now, while tender, 

 protected from frost by a covering of eight or ten inches of 

 Boil, — one of the advantages of originally planting below the 

 surface ; another, the protection the sides give the young 

 shoot ; and another, the additional tier of roots produced next 

 season between the original ones and the surface of the 

 ground. 



Cut the cane back to within about fifteen inches of the 

 ground, bend the stem carefully down and cover with a few 

 inches of soil, for vines that can withstand the severity of our 

 winters after becoming mature, are often seriously injured 

 while young ; hence, it is better thus to protect them, at least 

 for two or three years after planting, and where practicable, its 

 continuance would be beneficial both to vine and fruit. 



If from any cause the first cane produced is a feeble one, 



and not more than two or three feet long, it should be cut 



back to two well-developed buds, and the earth that is put in 



to fill up the hole in the fall should be taken out again in the 



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