76 ON THE PRUNING OF VINES. 



fruiting shoots of a vine can occupy, because the 

 ascent of the sap is thereby facihtated ; in conse- 

 quence of which all the lowermost buds break very 

 weakly, and some not at all, while the sap flies with 

 such force to the extremities, that scarcely any good 

 bearing-shoots can be made to grow from the vicinity 

 of the stem. This necessarily causes the retention 

 of old naked wood at the autumnal pruning, and this 

 annually increasing in distance from the stem, no 

 species of pruning Avill prevent it occupying in a 

 short time a disproportionate extent of the surface of 

 the wall, and causing all the fruit to be borne at the 

 extremities of the branches. Other objections might 

 be urged, but the foregoing sufficiently show, that 

 without very disadvantageous results, vines cannot be 

 pruned to be trained in the fruit-tree method. 



Spur pruning. This is the usual method adopted 

 throughout the country in the pruning of vines, but 

 although almost universally practised, it is calculated 

 in a high degree to create a large scaffolding or su- 

 perstructure of old naked wood. A spur may be de- 

 fined to be a shoot, shortened so as to contain not 

 more than /o2/r buds. If a shoot contain ^?;e buds, it 

 cannot with proprietor be called a spur. Spur prun- 

 ing, therefore, is the annual shortening of the fruit- 

 bearing shoots of a vine, so that each shall contain 

 not more than four buds. This being premised, it 

 will be necessary to point out in as distinct a manner 

 as possible the disadvantages attending this method 

 of pruning a vine. 



Pirst^ every shoot that is sufficiently large to bear 

 fruit, emitted by an established vine, if it be trained 

 at full length throughout the summer, in the manner 

 hereafter mentioned in the chapter on training, will 

 produce at least twenty good well-ripened fruit-buds, 

 and each of these, in the following year, will produce 

 on an average two bunches of grapes, so that a shoot 

 of this description will hediV forty bunches. Now if a 

 shoot be shortened to three buds, which is the num- 

 ber that spurs on an average usually contain, two of 



