86 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



of small ones, and is more able to resist disease, and especially- 

 premature decay. When we come to prune in the autumn, 

 although we are obliged to cut away some very fine buds, yet 

 the second one from the base of the spur is nearly or quite as 

 good as any of those removed, and will give very fine clusters. 

 Many of mine this year weighed upwards of thirteen ounces 

 each. The principal advantage, even aljove all the others, is that 

 the vine is always kept within a small com.pass, and is a perma- 

 nent affair ; inasmuch as it will bear as much fruit, and carry 

 as much foliage at five or six years, as at fifty or one hundred. 

 I think that the special efforts of the grape-grower should 

 always be directed to producing the buds for his future crop, 

 the present one being already mostly beyond his control. 



I have not usually given the Concord any winter protection ; 

 it is generally so well ripened and so hardy in its nature, as to 

 endure ordinary winter weather without protection ; but in 

 unfavorable seasons it is liable to be insufficiently ripened 

 to withstand the influence of extreme cold without suffering, 

 and in such cases there follows a partial or even a total failure 

 of a crop. In fact, the winter of 1860-1, showing a tempera- 

 ture of 22° below zero on the 8th day of February, killed all 

 the wood which stood above the snow-line on that day. This 

 might not have happened, and probably would not, if the wood 

 had been well ripened in the autumn previous. The autumn 

 of 1860 was very wet, and slightly cooler than the average of 

 seasons, and the foliage of grape-vines and even apple-trees was 

 killed by a severe freeze on the first day of October, while still 

 green and growing. Vines planted in the way I have described, 

 can be easily laid down at a cost of not more than one day's 

 labor of a man and a boy for an acre, which is a very cheap 

 insurance, considering the risk of so valuable a crop. My vines 

 are planted on the east side of the trellis, a foot from it, and are 

 trained in a slanting direction to the lower wire. Above that 

 point they are carried up on the west side of the trellis, so that 

 when pruned, and the ties cut, they fall toward the ground on 

 the w.est side by their own weight. A boy can hold them down, 

 while a man throws three or four shovelfuls of soil upon them 

 to hold them in place. 



Although I have entered and described the vines traiped to a 

 single trellis, yet it is in most respects like fifteen others iii the 



