6 BULLETIN 349, U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 
the vines (Pl. II, fig. 2). This enables the growers to plow and 
cultivate lengthwise and crosswise. Of late years, since the proper 
method of pruning Sultanina has become better known, there is a 
tendency toward trellising. The vineyards are plowed twice an- 
nually. In the first plowing the soil is thrown away from the vines 
(Pl. I, fig. 3), and in the second it is thrown up to them again 
(Pl. I, fig. 1). Frequent cultivations are given early in the season, 
all culture being abandoned after the spring rains are over. 
Crops can be grown without irrigation, but it has been practiced 
largely because it increases the size of the fruit and therefore also 
increases the yield. Trouble has been experienced in some localities 
on account of the lands becoming waterlogged from irrigation. 
PRUNING METHODS IN RAISIN VINEYARDS. 
Three methods of pruning are practiced with raisin varieties in 
this country. These are spur, cane, and spurring laterals on canes, 
the methods used differing with the varieties. 
All grape-pruning systems have, however, the one 
underlying principle that the grape usually bears 
its fruit on shoots from wood of the previous 
year’s growth. The pruning should, therefore, be 
such as to renew the wood at a given point from 
year to year, thereby regulating its production and 
keeping the plant thoroughly shaped and under 
constant control. 
THE SPUR, STOOL, OR SHORT PRUNING SYSTEM. 
The simplest and cheapest method and the one 
Sapp = extensively used in California with the stockier 
Fic. 1—A grapevine varieties of Vinifera grapes is the spur system, 
pruned to Spurs. otherwise known as the stool or short pruning 
system. By this method the body of the vine is grown to the desired 
height and shoots are permitted to grow from only the two uppermost 
buds. The two resulting canes are cut back in the winter to spurs of 
twoeyeseach. The following year these spurs are allowed to produce 
growth. The resulting canes are again cut back to spurs and all of 
them allowed to remain if the vine is strong enough. Thus the vine 
under ordinary conditions at the beginning of the fifth year consists 
of a trunk from which spring four or five arms, on each of which a 
cane has been cut back to a spur (fig. 1 and PI. II, fig. 3). When the 
vine is pruned the following winter all, or nearly all, the outer 
canes that have grown from the spurs are entirely removed. The 



1 For full information on the pruning and training of vines, see Farmers’ Bulletin No. 
471, entitled “Grape Propagation, Pruning, and Training.”’ 

