15 Oct., 1919.] Re-pruning Vines Damaged hy Frost, &c. 607 



damaged vine be so treated as to supply a sufficiency of healthy and 

 fruitful canes. If nothing be done to the vines subsequent to the frost 

 in the way of pruning or disbudding, numerous small shoots will 

 be thrown out by the damaged stubs of the primary canes as well as 

 water shoots from the old wood of the vine. Owing to their number, 

 the individual development of these shoots is very poor, and at the 

 following winter's pruning, not only is there a host of useless canes 

 to remove, but it is difficull to find any sufficiently stout to constitute 

 proper pruning wood. 



The accompanying illustrations explain what happens in the more 

 common cases of damage by frost. Fig. 1 shows a spur and portion of 

 the old wood of a short-pruned vine, which was damaged by frost in 

 October, say, ten days or a fortnight before the drawing was executed; 

 the leaves, the embryo bunches {h,h . . . .), and the upper por- 

 tions of the shoots have been completely burnt and blackened by the 

 frost, the wbole of the crop as it " showed " prior to the visitation is 

 destroyed. During the ten days following the frost young shoots have 

 sprouted ; those marked s, s . . grow from the axils of ihe destroyed 

 leaves, whilst s^ Sj . . are water shoots from the old wood. 



If the injured vine be untreated in any way, the spur shown in 

 Fig. 1 will, in the following autumn, after the fall of the leaves, pre- 

 sent the appearance shown in Fig. 2, and be little more than a scrubby 

 mass of barren shoots of poor pruning value. If, on the other hand, 

 the damaged shoots be severely pruned by cutting them at A and B, 

 Fig. 1, and care be taken to remove all water shoots s^ Sj . . . . 

 (Fig. 1), the result will be vastly different, and the spur will present 

 the appearance shown in Fig. 3. In place of a large quantity of use- 

 less wood, there will be two, three, or, perhaps, four stout canes to 

 provide suitable pruning Avood, and which have borne fruit, as is shown 

 by the fragments of stalks where the bunches were severed at vintage 

 time. It will be noted that the three canes shown in Fig. 3 are not 

 growths from the frost-damaged shoots, neither are they water shoots; 

 they result from the development of the latent eyes described above, and 

 which would not have developed had the sprouts figured in rudimentary 

 form in Fig. 1 been allowed to remain. 



Obviously the most logical treatment for a vine injured as shown in 

 Fig. 1 consists in the complete suppression, as soon as possible after the 

 frost, of all shoots; this must be followed a week or two later by 

 thorough disbudding, all water shoots, which make their appearance in 

 considerable numbers on the old wood, being removed. Careful disbud- 

 ding is essentially a corollary of re-pruning after frost. 



At first it might appear that the sprouts Sj s^, Fig. 1, are 

 lateral shoots. This, however, is not the case; they result from 

 the premature development of main buds whi^ih, under normal circum- 

 stances, would only have sprouted the following spring.* That these 

 normally fruitful buds should produce little if any crop is, no doubt, 

 due to their immature state when forced into grovs^h by abnormal 

 conditions brought about by frost. 



Pruning as at C, and even at T>, Fi?. 1. has often been recom- 

 mended; it is, in fact, the older method, but it will very generally be 

 found inferior to the more radical treatment at A and B fcr the reason 

 that it leads to the development of imperfectly matured main buds, which 



♦ See Revue de Viticulture, Vol. X., p. 451, 15th October, 1898. 



