74 BOAKD OF AGRICULTURE. 



this method you annually alternate your spurs and keep the 

 bearing wood close to the main stem. 



If, for any reason, your spurs are weak, cut them back one 

 eye to make strong wood for the next year's bearing, — never 

 fruit a weak spur. 



Suppose you have too much wood ; there is but one remedy, 

 and that is, to withhold all feeding of any kind until the crop, 

 to which the strength of the vine goes, has exhausted the vine 

 sufficiently to bring it to its proper balance. A too strong vine 

 will sometimes take four or five years to attain that balance ; 

 and, as I have said before, you will know what that is by the 

 fact, that when you have the true proportion between root and 

 branch the new wood will be not more than two feet and a half 

 in length, with short joints and full buds. Your vine is then in 

 a state of perfect balance, and in the proper condition to give 

 you its best crop. 



Pole culture, you perceive, would be the same thing, except 

 that, in the renewal system by two poles, these arms are cut 

 close to the main stem alternately, — one this year, we will say, 

 and the other the next. Usually, one of these spurs shoots one 

 eye, and the other two. If both grow, you will take out the 

 weakest, and train up the strongest on the pole. Though you 

 have two new shoots for the current year, at the end of 

 the season you will cut one of those out close to the main 

 stem, and the other one you will cut down to the point where 

 the wood has ripened buds, well enough developed to bear your 

 fruit. Now, you have got one shoot for bearing fruit, and one 

 spur for making wood, the succeeding year. The one that is to 

 bear fruit goes to the top of the pole and bears its fruit, and that 

 which is to make wood, makes new buds and new wood, to bear 

 fruit the next year, and so on alternately. That is the renewal 

 system which is adopted at the West, in growing the Catawba 

 grape ; but many of the growers are now going into the espalier 

 culture, as on the whole the most economical, and certainly the 

 best, as giving two long arms of bearing wood, which do not 

 need to be constantly renewed, and giving annually larger crops 

 than are obtained with the pole culture ; and, lastly, saving the 

 trouble of perpetually renewing the poles, which must be 

 renewed every second or third year, while the espalier does not 

 need to be renewed oftener than once in ten or twelve years. 



