168 THE GRAPE CULTUKIST. 



handled carefully. It is now five years since the vine was 

 trained in this manner, and the fruit seems to improve in- 

 stead of deteriorating. I do not attribute the improvement 

 in the fruit entirely to the horizontal arms, but only in part, 

 for without doubt the spur-pruning and the close pinching 

 of the young shoots assist very much in the development 

 of the fruit. The method used to obtain these arms was 

 as follows : 



The season before I attempted to train it, I cut the whole 

 vine back to within about three feet of the ground, and let 

 it produce new shoots from whatever part they happened 

 to come. It being an old untrained vine, as I have stated, 

 it produced several very strong young canes, and I cut 

 away all but four; the two upper ones started about three 

 feet from the ground, these I cut off to four feet and laid 

 them down horizontally ; they reached to A, A. One of the 

 two lower canes sprung from the old stem about one foot 

 from the ground, and just where it was wanted for the 

 lower arm, but there was no young cane opposite to form 

 the other. There was, however, one that came out from 

 near the roots, and this was used for the other lower arm 

 by twisting it around behind the old stem, and bringing it 

 down opposite the first arm ; the two arms were then cut 

 off at A, A. The lower arms are trained on the same level, 

 although one of them starts a foot or more below the other. 

 This makes no difference except in appearance, as it does 

 not matter whether the arms start from buds nearly oppo- 

 site or not ; all that is requisite is to bring them to nearly 

 the same height before they are allowed to produce leaves 

 or fruit. The next season the two end canes were allowed 

 to grow long enough to lay down and extend the arms to 

 their full length. In selecting the buds for upright canes 

 I reserved some of those on the under side of the arm ; the 

 canes from these bear fruit just as well as those from the 

 upper side. 



I would not recommend this mode of training for vine- 



