CLOSE PRUNING FOR THE OPEN AIR. 113 



M. Grin says that he commences them by un- 

 tying all the leading branches in November. (In 

 our climate good judges prefer October.) A se- 

 lection of bearing shoots is then made. Those 

 situated at the back of the branch are rigorously 

 suppressed by being cut clean out. Forerights, on 

 the other hand, are preserved. These, under this 

 close system, never get too far from the wall's 

 heat, and form an essential part of the bearing 

 wood. In England they are too often cut out, 

 which is an erroneous notion altogether. Of the 

 other classes of shoots, those which show the best- 

 formed eyes (ripe buds), and which have the best 

 promise of wood-buds for succession at their base, 

 are carefully chosen to bear the next year's crop. 

 These shoots are then, generally, cut back to two 

 eyes ; and if the upper eye be the more developed 

 and the stronger, it is bisected before it attains any 

 length, and is thus arrested for a time. Mean- 

 while the lower and the more feebly-constituted 

 eye receives all the spring sap, and is prevented 

 from languishing. The wood-shoots which spring 

 from each spur — and here it is important to mark 

 the distinction made on the Continent between a 

 spur and a shoot, and also to state that the term 

 " spur" refers mainly to the product of manipula- 

 tion — are kept as a reserve to be transformed, by 

 close summer-pinching to two leaves, into fruit- 



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