152 THE GARDENER. [April 



growing is a matter for dispute by different cultivators who are reputed 

 and recognised authorities ; but enough has been said to show how very 

 widely authorities differ on this as on other important matters, and 

 that a sifting process is going on which is much to be preferred either 

 to a stagnation of thought or the promulgation of merely stereotyped 

 ideas. One of the chief objects of cultivators should be to assist begin- 

 ners to pick up some crumbs of true and correct practice, as circum- 

 stances will admit of its being done. 



With regard to the one -Vine, or modifications of the one-Vine, 

 system, it must be patent to all that its advocates can only point to a 

 very few instances of cultivation in that character as successful ex- 

 amples, and these under rather exceptional circumstances. One might 

 count them all on the fingers of the hands. There are a few of these 

 monster Vines well used to illustrate the idea that by letting Vines 

 have plenty of scope at root and branch, long-lived Vines are obtained 

 that bear ordinary — very ordinary — crops for a long term of years in 

 succession. We are never told of any such Vines being subject to the 

 debilitating ordeal of ripening, for twenty years in succession, their 

 Grapes in April or May, nor of their percentage of mortality, simply 

 because they are not, that I am aware of, subject to the hard uphill 

 work of thousands of Vines grown on the single-rod system, and 

 because there are very few such Vines from which to form a table of 

 mortality. But if a house of Vines grown on the single-rod system 

 happens to break down, forthwith the advocates of the extension theory 

 trumpet it from Land's End to John o' Groats. There are plenty of 

 single rods, and very hard-worked ones too ; and is it a matter for 

 wonder to be able to construct tables of mortality from their ranks 1 

 Be it borne in mind, I am not desirous of disparaging the monster 

 Vine plan under certain conditions. What I want to show is, that the 

 balance struck between the two systems is unwarrantable, unfair, and 

 calculated to mislead. 



In every one of the instances where monster Vines are held up as 

 patterns of cultivation, they have an unlimited run in congenial soil, 

 and that in the natural directions of outwards and onwards. Now, 

 apart from all other considerations, it appears to me very questionable 

 whether — in a position where the natural soil is adverse, and the bor- 

 der has to be artificially formed, and, as a consequence of position and 

 dearth of soil, restricted, say, to a parallelogram 30 feet by 60 feet — 

 any one of these large Vines pointed to would, at this date, have 

 been in the same vigour and fruitful condition in a circumscribed 

 artificial border, especially when denied progress in a direct contrary 

 line to the top growth. Their doing well for so long a time, in my 

 opinion, depends on their roots having unlimited room in a soil and 



