72 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



vigor, it will have sufficient strength to push all these huds, and 

 give you hunches of equal size ; but in the early period, for 

 three, four or five years, you will find in the renewal system, 

 the best bunches at the .top, and the meagre and less valuable 

 on the lower part of the stem, therefore I prefer spur pruning. 



Spur pruning means leaving the shoots of the current year in 

 short spurs of three or four eyes, on each side of the old wood 

 for the next year's bearing ; cutting out alternate spurs to one 

 eye, to make new wood for the next year's bearing ; when you 

 will cut back those spurs which have borne fruit this year to 

 one eye to make bearing spurs for the next year, thus keeping all 

 your spurs near to the old wood and avoiding unsightly stubs. 



It is the easiest mode of cultivating and pruning ; when once 

 well established, an intelligent boy, fourteen years old, can 

 prune your vineyard as well as yourself. Usually, the fruit 

 ripens a little earlier on the spur ; and there seems to be a good 

 reason for that, because you have cut away all but three eyes, 

 and they were the eyes which were first pruned, and are, there- 

 fore, the most solid and well-ripened ; and being nearer the 

 main stem, the sap does not have to traverse so long an extent 

 of wood to reach the fruit. You would, I think, in the summer, 

 find it profitable to pinch excessive growth ; and it would be a 

 safe rule to pinch whenever a shoot had grown, say twelve 

 inches, perhaps sooner with short-jointed wood ; and wood will 

 be shorter or longer jointed, according as the stimulus at the 

 root pushes that wood with more or less vigor. If you have 

 just the right quantity of root to support the vine, the wood 

 will be short-jointed ; it will have its eyes three or four inches 

 apart ; if you feed it excessively, the joints may be twelve inches 

 apart. The long joint is objectionable. It shows you have 

 pushed your wood too fast, the buds are not so strong and the 

 wood not so solid. You would find, therefore, in spur pruning 

 the advantage of having the first ripened wood and the first 

 developed buds. 



As to the time of pruning, November is the best season. 

 Having, at the end of the first year, got your main stem estab- 

 lished, you would lead, if in pole culture, one stem from it, if 

 in trellis culture, two stems, which would be tied on to the 

 espalier diagonally, at an angle of forty-five degrees say, and 

 pinched occasionally, that the wood might be made robust aild 



