416 ANNUAL REPORT. 



first shoot becomes weakened and never produces as fine a bunch of 

 grapes as the secondary eye; so that the careful cultivator waits until 

 about the time the buds burst. A grape vine never bleeds after three 

 leaves are formed; before that time if you break a cane it will bleed. 

 You may ask how many leaves you shall have beyond the last bunch 

 of grapes. My answer to that is, it is something like the formula to a 

 patent manure — you must be your own judge; according to the vigor 

 of your vine and the experience had with the variety you are growing. 

 Your grapes run to compactness. This may be due to pruning too 

 long in the summer, or by not enough organic manure in your soil to 

 give vitality to the vine. If it is caused by the latter, the sooner the 

 practice of dumping the manure of this city into the Mississippi river 

 ceases, the sooner you will have finer clusters of grapes. 



After you get to where you do not care to have a fruit-eye form you 

 may remove the surplus growth there just as much as you please, 

 because that part of the vine is nothing more than a weed to you^ 

 and you don't want to grow any more weeds than you can help. 



Another important point in this country is that of earliness in the 

 maturity of your fruit. Nature compels you to take the first requisites 

 toward earliness, that is, pruning sooner after the fall of the leaf. 

 The European authorities and experimental stations have proven 

 without doubt, and it has been demonstrated also by the American 

 grower, that the sooner you prune after the fall of the leaf the earlier 

 your vine bursts in the spring. Hence, in a climate where you are 

 compelled to prune early and cover your vines, if you are in a place 

 where late frosts prevail, don't uncover your vines before you are com- 

 pelled to in the spring. The nearer the surface of the ground you can 

 put your fruit and avoid dirt, the quicker it will come to maturity in 

 the fall. 



Another thing which I see practiced here is, too late disturbance of 

 the soil. We in Jersey find that even in our winters we cannot dis- 

 turb our soil within six weeks before the ripening of the fruit, unless 

 it is done at the expense of the fruit-bud the next winter; so that in 

 all fruit culture it is a question when to stop cultivating. To be suc- 

 cessful in raising the peach or grape, culture must stop sufficiently 

 early to allow the bud to harden. 



While on the experimental farm Prof. Porter called ray attention to 

 the fact that he had stopped cultivating except to just cut the weeds 

 with a hoe around the Russian trees. I said to him, "I suppose you do 

 that to ripen your wood?" He said, "Yes, sir, I do; and the question 



