616 



FRUIT GARDEN. 



is by no means uncommon to see young vines 

 nearly destroyed by over-bearing, especially the 

 Muscats. These "show" in an extraordinary 

 way on strong young canes in newly-made 

 borders ; but if the fruit be allowed to remain, 

 and close stopping be resorted to, the constitu- 

 tion of the Muscat will be completely broken 

 up. Let such be, however, allowed to make as 

 much wood as they please," and a different re- 

 sult will be the consequence. The usual prac- 

 tice is to stop each shoot at the second joint 

 above the bunch, carefully preserving the two 

 leaves to draw nourishment to the fruit, and to 

 enable the sap to become properly elaborated. 

 Many excellent cultivators pursue a different 

 course, and stop each shoot at the joint next to 

 the bunch, and assert that the fruit does equally 

 well, and that a much greater amount of light 

 is allowed to enter the house, and on this ac- 

 count probably one leaf performs the functions 

 of two. Be this as it may, no doubt that both 

 more light and a better circulation of air is ad- 

 mitted to the fruit in consequence of this short 

 stopping ; but the question is, Are these, beyond 

 a certain extent, actually essential to the ma- 

 turity of the fruit, or are they an equivalent for 

 the greater amount of nutriment which would 

 be supplied by an increase of foliage? Mr 

 Mearns, an old and expert grape-grower, says in 

 Horticultural Society's Transactions :" — " Blind 

 all the eyes on each fruit-spur as soon as they 

 push above a joint or two before pinching them 

 back, always cautiously retaining one eye ; and 

 be particularly cautious that nothing should 

 happen to injure the leaf that accompanies the 

 bunch, for if that is lost, the fruit comes to no- 

 thing." In pruning on the close-spur system, 

 no doubt depriving the spur of the leaves be- 

 yond the fruit is decidedly objectionable, for 

 it is the leaves beyond the fruit that draw 

 nourishment to it, and not those behind it, un- 

 less in a very limited degree. 



The preservation of the leaves on vines, as 

 indeed of all other trees and plants, is of vast im- 

 portance — indeed, so much so, that the removal 

 of a single leaf tends to lessen the vigour and 

 energies of the tree : much more so must that be 

 the case when they are removed in numbers, 

 under the mistaken notion of admitting light to 

 the fruit, and the still more barbarous practice 

 of denuding the vines almost entirely, as some 

 ignorant persons do in the case of vines in the 

 open air, with a view to accelerate their ripen- 

 ing. The leaves in plants perform a somewhat 

 similar office to that of the lungs in animals. 

 An animal cannot exist without its lungs more 

 than it can without its stomach, neither can a 

 plant live or grow without its leaves. The use 

 of the lungs in the former is to expose the chyle 

 to the action of the air, which they decompose, 

 so that its oxygen may unite with the chyle, 

 and thus change it into blood. In plants, the 

 leaves act the part of lungs, and not only de- 

 compose air, but act on light also, in the process 

 of elaborating the sap ; and hence plants can no 

 more live without light than without air or food, 

 as light is necessary to turn their food into sap, 

 or to bring it into the proper state for affording 

 them nourishment. 



The rules in general laid down for thinning 

 the wood and stopping the shoots, held by some 

 necessary, as they think, to throw a greater sup- 

 ply of strength into the remaining buds, and by 

 others to prevent an unnecessary expenditure of 

 the energies of the tree in the formation of wood 

 to be afterwards cut off, seem to admit of some 

 debate ; at least they are not reconcilable with 

 the views entertained by some eminent physio- 

 logists. In a leading article in u The Gardeners' 

 Chronicle," 1843, p. 443, we find the following 

 reasoning. After submitting six propositions to 

 the notice of cultivators, the author proceeds : 

 " If this be so, the system of rigorous pruning 

 of the vine must be wrong; on the contrary, its 

 leaves should be allowed to form in abundance, 

 and that destruction of laterals at an early 

 period which is so much recommended must 

 be injurious, because all those laterals, if allowed 

 to grow, would by the end of the season have 

 contributed somewhat to the matter stored in 

 the stem for the nutrition of the fruit ; because 

 the preparation of such matter would have been 

 more rapid, and because the ripening of the 

 fruit which depends on the presence of such 

 matter would have been in proportion to the 

 rapidity of its formation. If we are not greatly 

 mistaken, the early maturity and excellence of 

 the grapes obtained out of doors by Dr M'Lean 

 of Colchester, is entirely owing to the large 

 quantity of wood which he lays in during the 

 summer, as early as he can possibly persuade 

 his vines to produce it. It is a mistake to sup- 

 pose that the sun must shine on the bunches of 

 grapes in order to ripen them ; nature intended 

 no such thing, when heavy clusters were caused 

 to grow on slender stalks, and to hang below the 

 foliage of branches attached to trees by their 

 strong and numerous tendrils. On the con- 

 trary, it is evident that vines naturally bear their 

 fruit in such a way as to screen it from the sun ; 

 and man is most unwise when he rashly inter- 

 feres with this intention. What is wanted is 

 the full exposure of the leaves to the sun : they 

 will prepare the nutriment of the grape ; they 

 will feed it, and nurse it, and eventually rear it 

 up into succulency and lusciousness. We there- 

 fore submit to our horticultural readers that 

 rigorous summer-pruning is wrong. Let us not, 

 however, be misunderstood : we do not suggest 

 that a vine should form all the wood it likes ; 

 that should be provided against by good winter- 

 pruning, and by rubbing off such buds as are 

 not to grow into shoots. What we contend 

 for is, that those shoots which are selected to 

 remain should be permitted to produce as much 

 foliage as possible ; and that as the destruction 

 of laterals is the diminution of foliage, that 

 destruction should be discontinued. When, 

 however, branches have grown for many weeks, 

 and are in the autumn beginning to slacken in 

 their power of lengthening, theory says it is 

 then right to stop the shoots by pinching off 

 their ends, because after that season newly- 

 formed leaves have little time to do more than 

 organise themselves, which must take place at 

 the expense of matter forming in the other 

 leaves. Autumn stopping of the vine shoots 

 should, therefore, be not only unobjectionable 



