I/O Culture of the Grape in Cities. 



pinched off. In a week or ten days, the highest buds will start ; and, when 

 another leaf is formed on each, the buds must be again removed; and, 

 later still, the process must be repeated, each time an additional leaf being 

 left. As the effect of these pinchings, the formation of wood to a great 

 extent is arrested, and the energies of the vine are directed to the develop- 

 ment of the fruit. After the third pinching, it is best to let the main shoots 

 grow ; and, should they overpass the bar or course above them, push them 

 behind it, and leave them to expatiate in the plenteous sunshine. These 

 pinchings of the shoots also cause the older laterals to grow rapidly: 

 they, too, should be pinched in, a fresh leaf being left each time. And 

 the result of it all is the gathering of a clump of greatly enlarged and 

 healthy foliage around the cluster of fruit, protecting it from the intensity 

 of the sunshine, and elaborating its juices to a perfection not otherwise 

 attained. 



Let us now glance at the fruit from your ten feet of fencing. At the 

 end of the third year, the four vines will yield about twenty bunches, giving 

 you a foretaste of what is in store, and amply rewarding your patient toil. 

 The next season, you will gather twice the quantity of larger and finer 

 grapes; and in the sixth year, when your vines will have reached their 

 maturity, you should find — let us see : eight arms, with ten shoots to each, 

 and the shoots severally garnished with three noble bunches ; yes, two 

 hundred and forty bunches of truly delicious fruit. Ye dwellers in city- 

 homes, be comforted. 



But in many yards there are vacant spaces of far greater extent. Thirty, 



fifty, a hundred feet of fence may be appropriated to the grape ; and the 



plan above suggested may be applied to the several sections of the trellis. 



For an extended line, however, there is a better mode of distributing the 



vines over the trellis, by which the length of the standards is reduced, and 



their obliquity greatly lessened. But to every mundane task there is an 



appointed bound, and the end of this has come. 



C. W. Ridgely. 

 Baltimore, Md. 



