264 Treatment of the A'lnerican Grape -Vine. 



character of the vine as a rank or moderate grower. His trellis is six and 

 a half or seven feet in height, with five wires. When the vines have fully 

 covered the trellis, and are evidently impatient of restraint, he takes out 

 alternate vines, leaving the others from sixteen to twenty-four feet distant 

 from each other in the rows. 



During the fall or winter, he does his first pruning. It is quickly accom- 

 plished, and merely consists in cutting away some of the tangled mass of 

 wood, but leaving three times as much as he thinks he will require. Nothing 

 more is done with the vines until the early days of summer. In the mean 

 time, the buds burst, the shoots push out, the leaves develop, and the fruit- 

 clusters appear : and, as not a few but very many buds were left to receive 

 the life-giving currents proceeding from a large and strong root, vegetation 

 proceeds in its normal course ; and there is strength and vigor, and not 

 weakness and decay, in the progress it has made. It is during the critical 

 period of the starting of vegetation that Nature should encounter nothing to 

 disturb the performance of her functions ; and, this period having passed, 

 when the clusters have appeared the time comes when the real work of prun- 

 ing may be done. Then, surveying the trellis, Mr. Byington sees fruit-clus- 

 ters in great excess : but this is a difficulty easily cured ; whereas, in case of 

 a deficiency, he would have no remedy. He has the courage to cut when 

 cutting is attended with no danger, even though scores and scores of clus- 

 ters of incipient fruit are thereby made to come to nought. He removes 

 entire canes, then entire shoots, until he is satisfied that he has just sufficient 

 left to fill the trellis without crowding. Then from weak shoots he removes 

 a portion of the clusters, that they may have no more fruit than they will 

 have leaves to ripen. This completed, the canes, and from time to time 

 the shoots, are brought up, and secured to the trellis wires. No summer- 

 pruning or pinching is resorted to, and Nature proceeds with the work of 

 maturing the fruit. 



And, now, as to results. I refer first to the Delaware vine, because it 

 has been regarded as the vine for close planting and pruning. In Mr. By- 

 ington's vineyard, the vines were sixteen feet apart in the rows ; and from each 

 stool, the trellis, six feet and a half high, was covered with healthy shoots 

 and foliage. The first and second wires were literally loaded with fruit ; 

 and, on the third and fourth wires, there was an abundance. Upon no vine 



