52 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



therefore, plant too deep, but let the roots be as near tlie surfoce 

 as they will bear without suffering from the droughts that some- 

 times occur during summer. In dry soils about six inches from 

 the surface will be the proper depth ; in stronger soils about 

 four inches. In the next place, it is important that the roots of 

 the vine should not be invited into the cool subsoil by deep 

 culture and rich composts ; simply ploughing the land to the 

 depth of nine inches will be sufficient preparation, and thirty or 

 forty loads of compost to the acre — to promote the formation of 

 roots of the young vines — will make the ground as rich as the 

 grape requires, for the grape does not need rich composts ; the 

 belief that it does has led to constant disappointment. 



It requires 7?iineral manures — phosphates, sulphur, potashes, 

 lime. Twenty bushels of bone-dust, twenty of ashes, and five 

 bushels of gypsum make a sufficient dressing for an acre, to be 

 applied once in three years. 



It is, however, not enough that the cultivator withholds high 

 culture and applies minerals ; he must also prune his vines in 

 such manner in the autumn, and pinch the growing shoots in 

 the summer, as to set back the sap and check excessive growth 

 of wood, the result of which would be spongy wood and imper- 

 fectly developed buds near the base of the spurs, where you are 

 to get your fruit the next year. Pinch your growing shoots, 

 therefore, when they have grown twelve or fifteen inches, and 

 again as often as they grow this distance beyond the last pinching, 

 so that a growing shoot will be pinched four times in growing 

 four or five feet. This swells the buds on all the wood to their 

 full size, but does not make them break. If laterals grow out 

 of the axils of the new wood, pinch them in at the first leaf. 



The best method of pruning for our short summers is the 

 system called spur-pruning. 



The renewal or long cane system exhausts the vine through 

 the necessity of making long bearing shoots annually at the 

 same time it is carrying a crop of fruit. If the vine is strong 

 enough no harm comes to it that season ; but if it is ever weak, 

 both wood and fruit fail to mature, and your debilitated vine 

 gets a shock from which it may never recover. In the spur- 

 pruning you are sure to ripen the wood, and if the weight of 

 fruit is adjusted to the strength of the vine it will always be 

 strong enough to mature its crop. 



