10 MASSACHUSETTS HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



This essay must be too limited to detail the advantages and dis- 

 advantages of planting and training as practised in this and other 

 countries. On the writer's grounds are vines* grown on many of 

 the approved systems. The stool, the stake, the fan, and the 

 Thomery systems may each be suited to some localities. But after 

 years of study and personal attention he is convinced that in this 

 climate the following described plan has advantages possessed by 

 no others ; perfect in the garden and unequalled in the vineyard. 



First: A vine bed f is prepared, of any desired length, on land 

 of moderate elevation and gentle grade. To do this a trench run- 

 ning northerly and southerly is excavated thirty inches deep by 

 ten feet wide. If gravel or sand is at the bottom, no draining is 

 needed ; but if the subsoil is retentive, tile, or other draining, must 

 be laid in the usual way. In this trench, the surface soil is re- 

 placed, incorporating with it all such fertilizers as form food for 

 the vine, and in such condition and quantity, especially the inor- 

 ganic parts, as may be supposed to last for an age — leather, hair, 

 horn piths, bones, spent lime, ashes, muck, leaf-mould, turf, etc. 

 Street scrapings and well rotted manure may also be added cau- 

 tiously ; but these should be excluded from contact with the roots 

 of the vine. When this is filled to the depth of twenty inches, 

 that is, ten inches below the surface, the young vines, of one j^ear's 

 growth in the nursery, or layers of the preceding season, are set 

 out in two rows ; each row three feet from the centre, and the 

 vines one foot | apart in the row A single cane is to be grown 

 from each vine, but two buds are allowed to start. When the 

 stronger has grown a foot, stop the weaker one by pinching, and 

 in the fall trim it off. These shoots as they grow should be tied 

 in pairs to a stake. When the canes reach six or more feet in 

 length, they are layered across the bed near to the opposite sides, 

 each row crossing the other, and are collected in sixes at a short 

 stake to the foot of which they are all secured, as shown in Fig. 1. 



For each and every six vines thus collected in a hill by layer- 

 ing, a trellis is made thus : twent}^ feet from the centre of the bed 



* About 12,000 vines in all, mostly planted since 1860. 



t The writer has beds like this, aggregating in length 3,000 feet, with 

 6,000 fruiting vines on them, from five to twelve years planted. 



X This distance is preferred to a greater one, say two feet, because the 

 vines are under better control. 



