STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 415 



•where you want them. In pruning for a fruiting vine the best ex- 

 perience in the state of New Jersey has demonstrated that never more 

 than twelve fruit-eyes should at any time be allowed to grow upon a 

 fruiting vine, no matter what its age may be. You may say twelve 

 fruiting vines is a small number; but the result of that number is an 

 average bunch of grapes weighing three-quarters of a pound to the 

 bunch. To-day the largest bunch of grapes which you had on ex- 

 hibition weighed thirteen ounces and a half; that is nothing more 

 than what a vine should produce with scientific culture on fully two- 

 thirds of the bunches it produces. Last year many bunches of grapes 

 were grown in New Jersey weighing one and three-quarter pounds. 

 From the second year onward your maxim should be, produce the 

 finest fruit possible and protect your fruit-eyes. That is the main-stay 

 of the grape culturists. 



The question will arise whether to fruit upon new wood or upon old 

 «anes pruned to the so-called spur system. This question is easily 

 answered when you once understand the nature of your fruit eyes. 

 There.are three prevailing lengths of pruning. The first is represented 

 by the Concord family. With the Concord family 1 think it unsafe to 

 run an old cane to the spur system for a long period. If I were to 

 assign a reason, it is that the old cane becomes so hard, and so fully 

 matures its eyes as to cause nature to spend a great deal of force in 

 the spring bursting its buds which should be used in the development 

 of the shoot itself. It has been found, therefore, that it is best, on 

 the Concord, to use longer spurs of new wood. So you have to leave 

 many more eyes on your canes than you wish. It is found, as a rule, 

 with the Delaware, that it is better on longer fruited canes, if you 

 trim from an old cane, to jleave at least six or eight eyes on every spur 

 that you make, and then select the shoot at the proper times. There 

 is another class of grapes, the Diana, and most of Rogers' hybi ids, that 

 do better on very long old arms. In a conversation I had with Charles 

 Downing, he said that the best Diana he had ever seen was fruited on 

 an old arm fifty feet long; and on the Hudson river where they raise 

 many of the hybrids, they find that long arms always give them a lar- 

 ger bunch and a better grape. 



We now come to summer pruning. The eye bursts, and as I have 

 shown, it is a compound eye, a large eye and an eye by the side of it. 

 If the primary eye bursts first, a cold spell would check the growth and 

 tlie shoot by its side bursts, then comes the question of which shoot to 

 save. As a rule, if the cold weather continues long, the bunch on the 



