28 MASSACHUSETTS HOETICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



each four feet long, the ends being pinched off. These arms are 

 retained until old ; four or five laterals are allowed to grow on 

 each cane, making eight or ten in all. The laterals are pinched 

 off a first and second time, and never get above eighteen inches 

 long. He always saves the axillary bud, and sometimes two buds, 

 as one may dry up. He lets only one bunch of fruit grow on the 

 axillary bud and two on the other. After blooming he pinches off 

 the superfluous clusters and the end of the shoot, always leaving 

 one good leaf. He raises from twenty to twenty-five pounds of 

 the handsomest fruit on each vine. His land is no better than is 

 ordinarily planted with corn, and has not had manure enough to 

 raise a good crop of corn. The shoot from the axillary bud makes 

 the spur for the next year. He has never sheltered his grapes. 



Mr. Talbot thought Mr. Moore right in regard to deep culture, 

 and such were also Dr. Fisher's views. When Mr. Barnett's vine 

 bed is filled level with the soil on each side, the roots will be four- 

 teen inches below the surface, which is eight inches too deep. 

 Mr. Blanchard sa^'s, " Never grow an inch of extra wood ; throw 

 the whole power of your vine into the fruit." No vine draws its 

 nourishment two years from the same place. Too much power is 

 wasted in growing extra wood. It is as easy to grow fruit as 

 wood. Dr. Fisher raises a new arm every year, removing the old 

 one, and this Mr. Talbot thought an instance of the waste of root 

 power. 



Henry F. French said the question was whether we should prune 

 to close spurs or whether we should let our vines run more freely. 

 Many persons who set their vines near together with the idea of 

 pruning closely, had taken out half the number, to give the others 

 more room. He questioned the possibility of pruning so as to 

 throw what would otherwise be wood growth, into the fruit. It 

 was curious to see how the same questions in horticulture came 

 round in from twenty to fifty years. Mr. French here referred to 

 a copy of " Cobbett's American Gardener," published in 1821, 

 containing directions, with diagrams, for training and pruning the 

 grape on the renewal system, with two growing and two fruiting 

 branches trained horizontal!}' on each side, each vine occupying 

 sixteen feet of trellis. He said that when a boy, about fifty years 

 ago, he cultivated Catawbas according to these directions, on the 

 top of a hill in Chester, N. H., and they ripened two years out of 

 three. He had no difficulty in getting plenty of fruit, though the 



