352 PRINCIPLES AND PRACTICE OF PRUNING 



it appears unnecessarily vigorous, more or longer spurs or fruit 

 canes should be left. Every vine should be judged by itself. It is 

 not possible to give more than general directions for the pruning of 

 the whole vineyard. It cannot be well pruned unless the men who 

 do the actual pruning are capable of using sufficient judgment to 

 modify their methods properly for each individual vine. 



264. Grapes under glass. — Only the European grape is 

 grown under glass. Two-year-old vines are planted in- 

 side the houses a foot or two froin the outer walls, cut 

 back to two or three buds and tied to iron brackets at- 

 tached to the rafters so the trunks will be not less than 

 a foot from the glass. Only the strongest shoot is al- 

 lowed to grow. Two systems of pruning are in vogue, 

 the spur and the long cane or long rod system. The 

 former is perhaps the more popular. 



In the spur system, when the tip reaches the top of 

 the house it is pinched. The cane then fills out and 

 stores food in lateral buds till the winter sets in, when 

 it is cut back two-thirds and covered on the ground until 

 spring. Since mice eat the buds they should be kept out 

 of the house. In the second spring the canes are tied 

 up and the leader shoot trained to the top of the house 

 and there pinched. No fruit is allowed to develop on this 

 shoot. On the older cane each second lateral on each 

 side is removed so the remaining ones may be a foot or 

 15 inches apart. This favors even distribution of the 

 crop from bottom to top. 



As a partial crop may be gathered the second season 

 from the older part of the vine the laterals should carry 

 not more than one clusterand should bepinched (217,21S) 

 at two nodes beyond the cluster. The sub-laterals should 

 be pinched when they have developed one or two lca\es. 

 Just before winter the terminal shoot should be cut about 

 half way, the side ones, all but one bud, close to the main 

 stem (often within the first quarter inch) and the vines 

 covered as before. 



In the third season the pruning and pinching are re- 

 peated, the laterals being allowed to bear about a pound 



