PROFITS IN GRAPE-GROWING. 



145 



patient, long-suffering and generous as she is, in the 

 vineyard, draws the line |at Canada thistles, and like 

 many another worthy matron, when she puts her foot 

 down that settles it. If you on your part insist on hav- 

 ing the weeds and thistles up even with the top wire of 

 the trellis, she on her part will just as stubbornly insist 

 on giving you none but second quality fruit. 



Perhaps no part of the work in the vineyard has so 

 much to do with quality as pruning. Insufficient prun- 



we will say, mature five tons. This requires 25,000 

 buds, or one-sixth of the whole. So you see our vine- 

 yard is loaded up with buds enough for thirty tons. It 

 will only carry five. Hence we must unload 25 tons, 

 or in other words prune away five-sixths of the bearing 

 wood. Now, suppose we only prune off four-sixths, or 

 two-thirds, leaving one-third or enough for ten tons. 

 What will be the result ? The land has strength for 

 only five tons. It is loaded double its capacity, and the 



Fig. 5. Akebi [Akelna ijiiiuata). Natural Size. (See page 140 



ing means overproduction, and overproduction means 

 poor quality. But why prune at all ? Let us illustrate. 

 If on a given highway you have a team which can haul 

 three tons and your load is ten tons, the only thing to do 

 to take off part of the load. It is precisely so in the 

 vineyard. At the close of the season one acre of good 

 Concord vineyard, in round numbers, will have 150,000 

 buds on the new wood. The capacity of the soil will, 



result is a lot of second quality and refuse grapes. 

 This is no theory, but the facts of nature, as unchange- 

 able as the law of gravitation. The amount of bear- 

 ing wood left in pruning varies with different varieties. 

 With Concord, leave five canes of nine buds each. 

 Delaware, leave three, and Catawba only two. Prune 

 and train to secure the fullest and most even distribution 

 of foliage and fruit. Because it more perfectly enables 



