88 



ing. Now, the objection to this system is this: there is a tendency 

 for all the fruit and the young growth to become tangled around the 

 horizontal wire instead of hanging free where they may be cut 

 easily in the fall without being torn to pieces. 



In the upright system, you have the fruit hanging over a greater 

 surface, freer and more apart from the other bunches, and it is 

 more easily sprayed, so that in general you are getting a finer type 

 of fruit with that system than under the old time two wire system. 



When the growth starts in the spring there is too much growth 

 there, and you have to do a process of summer pruning. The 

 grape is one of the things that we do prune in the summer. Usually 

 two buds, or sometimes three buds are starting to grow, and we 

 do not want but one there. We have a process called rubbing off, 

 whereby all the growing shoots but one are taken off. 



The grape is peculiar in that the fruit produced next season 

 is on wood that is not yet grown. These upright canes produce 

 the fruit but they do not produce it directly. They will produce 

 it by sending out laterals. After those laterals have grown out a 

 leaf, they put out a fruit bud, then they send out another leaf and 

 another fruit bud. 



Each bud will put out a good normal shoot, which, under good 

 conditions will produce two, three, or even four clusters of grapes. 

 Now, if you want to produce fancy fruit, all of these clusters ex- 

 cept one or two should be rubbed off. The three and four clusters 

 usually are small ones, and if you allow them to go on to maturity 

 the grapes will not be large. If you want to you can figure how 

 many clusters you are going to have on your vine. You have four 

 canes each about four feet in length. If the nodules are about 

 six inches apart on each one of the canes, you would have about 

 seven or more laterals coming out, and on each of those you will 

 have two clusters, so you would have somewhere from twelve to 

 fourteen or even twenty clusters on a cane, making from sixty to 

 eighty clusters per vine. If those are large clusters you are going 

 to have a pretty large yield. That is the fruit that is usually mark- 

 eted. Let me urge the importance of growing large clusters. 



Cultivation. — You must have a very thorough clean cultiva- 

 tion; you cannot grow grapes in sod. I have never yet seen a 

 section or a locality where you could grow grapes successfully in 

 sod. They need thorough cultivation. Have all your winter prun- 

 ing done before the buds have pushed out any. The vines are very 

 subject to bleeding. Like the maple the sap flows out very abund- 

 antly. But it does not do that if the trimming is done before the 

 growth starts. Cultivate once a week whether it rains or not. If 

 you should have a light shower after you cultivate, cultivate again, 

 so that you always have a dust mulch over the surface of your soil. 

 The grape needs lots of water in the soil. I do not believe there 

 is anything more I need say with regard to the cultivating methods. 

 A word or two in regard to the diseases and method of spraying. 



