458 PRUNING AND TRAINING THE VINE. 



or spur system of training the vine. We grant that tinder ordinary 

 circumstances fine crops have been and may be grown in that way ; 

 but at the same time we deny that it is either a natural or rational 

 system of training the vine. 



To take a plant which, properly planted and unrestrained, would in 

 a few years cover with vigorous branches an area of fifty to one 

 hundred or more yards ; to prepare for it a rich and perfect border ; 

 to confine it to a single rod of fifteen feet to twenty feet in length ; to 

 thin out the grapes, and part of the side branches as fast as they are 

 produced ; and ironi the time that those branches retained have each 

 made half-a-dozen leaves to keep them regularly stopped ; and at the 

 same time to expect that a plant so treated can take vigorous root-hold 

 of the soil in which it is planted is just as reasonable as it would be 

 to tie a horse's tail to the rack or manger where the food is placed, 

 and then blame him for not getting fat. Plants live and thrive and have 

 their being by the reciprocal action of roots and branches. Without the 

 latter roots cannot flourish, because there is no storehouse of orga- 

 nizable matter from which they can draw the material necessary for 

 their formation. 



We have therefore given each of our vines four branches to begin 

 with, having three instead of twelve permanent vines in each house, 

 supposing the houses to be forty feet long ; but we have also provided 

 for the horizontal branches to extend themselves, so that, should it seem 

 desirable, the centre or the two end vines shall, at the will of the culti- 

 vator, fill the house. 



It will have been seen that we do not advocate the whip-stick or 

 single-rod system of training the vine ; for, though we know that 

 some wonderful examples of cultivation have been produced by that 

 system, another fact must be noted, and that is that the remarkable 

 bunches have been produced during the first seven or ten years of 

 the vine's life, the produce afterwards sinking into comparative medio- 

 crity, while at twenty, or twenty-five years of age, the vines are com- 

 pletely " used up." Nor can it be otherwise ; no plant of free and 

 vigorous growth like the vine can be unnaturally cramped into a very 

 limited area, without in the course of years being enfeebled in consti- 

 tution. The perpetual pinching of the orchard- house system of tortur- 

 ing fruit trees into a bearing state is nothing more nor less than 

 inducing premature old age. We induce fruitfulness by subverting 

 the constitution of the plant ; and the more robust a plant is na- 

 turally disposed to grow, the more must it suffer from the practice. 

 The system of excessive restriction in the vine originated with the 

 Crawshays of Norwich. Something like thirty years ago it was adopted 

 almost without thought, because of its neatness and simplicity. 



By establishing our vines the four or more branches to each, we 

 seek to lay a broader basis of constitutional vigour ; in fact, we wish 

 to establish the plants upon something like a natural foundation, and 

 not from infancy to old age keep them perpetually dwarfed. Assuming 

 each rod to be twenty feet long, they will be at the top of the rafter 

 by the end of the third year. We then divide each rod into five 



