84 ON THE PRUNING OF VINES. 



of this description will bear forty bunches. Now, if a 

 shoot be shortened to three buds, which is the number 

 that spurs on an average usually contain, two of these 

 will be almost useless, being but imperfectly formed, 

 and therefore seldom producing fruit. Only the upper- 

 most bud can be depended upon to show fruit, and, 

 consequently, in order to ensure the production of as 

 many bunches of fruit as the single shoot will bear, 

 not less than twenty spurs must be provided. This is 

 the parent of many evils. First, these spurs if joined 

 together would be nearly three times the length of the 

 single shoot ; the surface of the wall, therefore, which 

 they occupy, will yield only one-third of the quantity 

 of fruit produced from that on which the single shoot 

 is trained. Secondly, the latter can be nailed to the 

 wall withjive nails, whereas, the twenty spurs will re- 

 quire twenty nails, and as many holes will be made in 

 the joints of the wall by driving them in. This evil is 

 not a light one. Moreover, a fourfold degree of trouble 

 and time will be required to nail and unnail these spurs, 

 beyond that necessary for the single shoot. Thirdly, 

 the fruit produced from the latter will be far superior 

 both in size and flavour, to that borne by the spurs, 

 for this reason : the best grapes are uniformly pro- 

 duced from the fullest-sized and best-ripened buds, 

 and these are generated on the shoots, from the begin- 

 ning of May to the middle of July, and in moderately 

 vigorous vines, range in order on each shoot, from the 

 fourth bud to about the twentieth ; but if a vine be 

 well established and very vigorous in its growth, it will, 

 under a judicious system of pruning, produce, on a 

 single shoot, from twenty-five to thirty buds within that 

 space of time. If a shoot be spurred, therefore, to 

 three buds, it will contain none, and ifto^fowr, only one 

 of these well-ripened buds, all the rest will have been 

 cut off in the pruning ; or, what is tantamount to it, 



