484 General Notices. 



Blet\a\\j/acinthma.—T\\\s plant is growing in the open air in the botanic 

 garden, after having withstood the winter without any protection except 

 its situation, namely the base of an east wall. — Henry Turner. Botanic 

 Garden, Bury St. Edmnncrs, April 1831. 



Raising Vines from Spur-eyes. — Mr. Trory of Easton, by the advice of 

 the gardener of R. Crawshay, Esq., of Honinghani, Norfolk, planted spur- 

 eyes about H in. deep in the front of his inside border of well prepared 

 light soil, — feaf mould, horse dung, &c. " This composition in a few days 

 was in such a state of fermentation as to produce a sensible heat to the 

 finger ; the eyes soon appeared above ground, and, being so well supplied 

 with sap from the spur and pieces of old wood attached to it, never stood 

 .still one day during the time the roots were forming, which is always 

 the case with young vines rearing from the large eye of last year's wood. 

 Not only does such an eye require ten times more food to nourish it than 

 those planted by Mr. Trory, but the wood on which the eye is placed does 

 not contain one tenth of the sap which the spur and the adjoining pieces 

 of wood do. 



" I must trouble you now further by explaining what I mean by a spur- 

 eye : suppose a vine, on the single shoot system of one year's growth from 

 the bottom to the top of the rafter, breaks every eye on the same and fruits, 

 jor not, I remove in the winter-pruning of the year every one of these shoots 

 to the last bud that had a leaf at its side; this small remaining bit of 

 wood I call a spur, which has two minute buds, sometimes quite invisible 

 to the naked eye, one on each side ; these buds have for years been called 

 spawn eyes, supposing they were not fruiting ones. We old blue aprons 

 used this slang word spawn, all over the garden, mostly to indicate a young 

 stock of any thing not in a fruiting state. The spur I have described above 

 .1 call a one year's spur, and as often as the season comes round, so do 

 I call the vine, or a one, two, three, four, five, six, or more years' spur, 

 never on any account allowing any one spur to get farther from the main 

 stem than the first year, except what is added to the distance by the 

 excrescence necessarily formed by the covering of old wounds and conse- 

 quent thickening. It was from such aged spurs that Mr. Trory produced 

 the beautiful vines at Easton : and I think there can be no greater proof of 

 the excellence of the spur system of grape-growing, than that, though the 

 spur be removed from the plant, it is still capable of making a shoot of 

 20 ft. or more of fine bearing wood ; whereas any eye farther up last year's 

 shoot would in the same time scarcely make a yard of any thing thicker 

 than a crow's quill, and about as likely to bear fruit. I may be asked 

 where such plants may be obtained ? Any where ; there is not a house in 

 the country worked on the old Hampton Court or broad-cast system that 

 does not produce plenty of fine sets every year, which are always thrown 

 away, while the young large eyes on the last yeai''s wood are improperly 

 employed in the rearing of .young vines." (B. Crawshay, in East Anglian, 

 March 22. 1831.) This newspaper has set out on the principle of allotting 

 a portion of every number to gardening and agricultural papers ; a most 

 rational plan, which every counti-y paper would surely feel the benefit of 

 adopting r* What can be more interesting to country readers than farming 

 and gardening ? Unfortunately, the farmers of this country are not yet 

 become a reading class. Much is said of Norfolk farmers and Norfolk 

 farming : neither are worthy of being named in the same day with the 

 farmers and farming of East Lothian. — Cond. 



On stopjnng Vines from bleeding. — Let the part bleeding be forced into 

 a sound potato ; for if any of the skin of the potato has been rubbed oifj 

 the sap of the vine will soon find its way to escape, and the vine will con- 

 tinue to bleed ; but if the potato be free from any bruise, it stops the vine 

 from bleeding. I have been much amused in proving this by experiments. 

 By chance I observed one of my vines bleeding very much ; a potato was 



