of cutting away unv portion of a plant is to improve the remaining 
portion. By pruning the grape the viae is kept within the bounds 
of the trellis, and consequently cultivation is facilitated; the plant is 
prevented from overbearing and thus large quantities of small and 
inferior fruit are avoided. A vineyard can be quickly ruined by 
neglecting to prune or to prune without an intelligent understand- 
ing of the principles of pruning. 
After pruning, the vines are permitted to swing free from the 
wires during the winter in the belief that they suffer less from the 
winter weather. Often vineyardists will cut the strings which tie 
up the permanent arms. 
Tying. — The tying of the grape is performed in the spring. In 
vineyard sections of the country, women, girls and boys are trained 
to do this work, for which they are paid $1.00 per day. The material 
used may be raffia, osier willow, green rye straw or the dry straw 
soaked in water, bass bark, corn husks, wool twine or small wire 
about the thickness of that used in. wire hairpins. The permanent 
parts of the vines are somewhat loosely tied with strong strings 
or willows and the annual canes are most expeditiously fastened 
with Xo. 18 annealed iron wire. The annealed wire is soft and will 
bend easily. It is cut in lengths of 1 inches. The operator works 
from the opposite side of the trellis from the vine and with a few- 
turns of the wire quickly fasten the cane, as shown in Fig. 12. 
JSuckering. — In the established vineyard the old vines each spring 
send up suckers from the roots. These must be removed, as they 
can form no part in our systems of pruning. They are easily re- 
moved while the tissue is soft and the work is generally done in 
June by women, who are paid $1.00 per day for such work, when a 
man's wages are $1.50 per day. When the vine on the trellis is be- 
coming weak because of some local trouble, as an injured trunk 
or cankerous old wood, or because of winter-killing it is a good 
practice to leave a strong, vigorous sucker which shall become 
the plant at the next pruning, and the old, weak top will be entirely 
cut away. Of course, if there is a general debility in the vineyard, 
or. a section of it, it should be considered a mark of insufficient plant 
food and be overcome by the use of fertilizers upon the land. 
RINGING. 
Ringing is an operation performed on grape-vines, as well as on 
other fruit plants, for the purpose of developing larger and better 
fruit, aud also to cause earlier ripening. It consists in removing 
a ring of bark about an inch wide from the bearing branch when 
the fruit is about one-third grown. The latter part of June is the 
time when the bark can be easily separated from the wood. This 
