PROPAGATION OF PLANTS 167 



surface fine and smooth. Before digging your vine you 

 must cut it off to within two buds of the ground. Yes, 

 you must. Boys and girls always demur at this, but the 

 reason for it is plain. We want one large, strong cane to 

 grow. There are from thirty to forty buds on your vine. 

 If all are retained they will all try to grow, and those that 

 succeed will make only weak branches. By doing as I 

 say you will have one strong stem instead of ten weak 

 ones, and your vine will be ten times as good. When the 

 two buds you have left begin to grow and have made two 

 or three leaves, pinch off the tip of the weaker one and 

 give the other a support to climb. If you wish to have it 

 grow tall as fast as possible, so that it may cover an arbor 

 or reach a second- or third-story porch or window, pinch 

 the tips of all its side shoots in the same way. By this 

 means a growth of from ten to thirty feet may be secured 

 in a season. 



Pruning. — Practically every bud or young vine or tree 

 must be looked upon as a little blind creature, wild with 

 ambition to overgrow the world. Your grapevine now has 

 forty or fifty buds. Only two of them can be allowed to 

 grow. If you wish to train to a trellis, cut your vine back 

 again to within four or five buds of the ground, and the 

 following spring allow only the two strongest branches to 

 grow, pinching the others as soon as they have made a 

 leaf or two. If you wish your vine to grow taller, you 

 may cut it off as high up as the wood is fully ripe, and 

 before it begins to grow smaller toward the tip pinch all 

 the side buds below the two topmost ones and allow only 

 one or two of the highest buds to continue the growth. 

 Care and patience should be exercised not to allow the 



