THIRTY-THIRD BlENNIAE SESSION 
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insects and fungous diseases. After the trunk or permanent part of the 
vine has been established whether it is for one method or whether it is 
for another, the crop will depend on the number of buds that are left on the 
new growth. In spur training you leave a greater number but shorter arms 
or spurs, adjusting the quantity of grapes produced just the same as you do 
with other methods. With the spur system you distribute the buds over a 
greater number of arms, whereas in the two or four arm or cane renewal, 
as most usually practiced in the other States, you are simply distributing a 
like number of buds over fewer but longer arms or canes. 
Another important factor that has to be dealt with on the Pacific 
Coast is that the viineyard soils vary greatly. We find a range of soil 
types varying from the very poorest to the very best. These vary in fruit pro- 
ducing capacity from three and one-half to twenty-five tons of grapes to the 
acre. Under normal conditions, there is plenty of vine growth there before 
the phylloxera attacks the vines. The rapidity with which phylloxera acts 
depends very largely upon the environments and the character of the soil. 
For instance, in a sandy soil the phylloxera can not travel or get from one 
part of a vine or from one vine to another very well. In California in the 
spring of the year, climatic conditions are also such that the phylloxera 
seldom attains the flying stage, and, on that account, does not spread as 
rapidly as it otherwise would. 
President Goodman: You do not think then, Mr. Husmann, that the 
pruning methods practiced in California have anything to do with causing 
phylloxera injury to the vines? 
Mr. Husmann: That has not been the cause at all. I would say thjis, 
however; any treatment that weakens a vine makes it more susceptible to 
phylloxera injury. 
President Goodman: Does this method of pruning make the vines weak? 
Mr. Husmann: Where properly done, not at all. In California we have 
instances where the vines have resisted the phylloxera for fifty or more 
years. Take the large vine of which I spoke, and I might mention a number of 
commercial plantings of old vines that have resisted the phylloxera for 
years. 
Mr. Lazenby: My question was not so much the question of pruning, 
but overcrowding; then, of course, you had to prune short and it was more 
the crowding of the vines, it seems to me. My observation in France has 
somewhat shown me that where they were crowded very much together 
growing only three or four feet apart and had been cultivated there for 
many, many years, that there was more phylloxera found, and perhaps 
just as when you crowd chickens or other animals together they get the 
cholera and if you separate them somewhat they are not likely to have 
the cholera. 
Mr. Husmann: Those crowded conditions do not exist in this country 
as where you mentioned, and in other portions of Europe, notably Germany 
and Italy, where viticulture has long since passed the first experimental 
stage and has been reduced to a science. As the result of growing vines 
on the land continuously for often more than a century, the soil contains so 
little that there must be put into the soil just what it lacks that the plant 
needs. It is for just such reasons that when the phylloxera struck the vine- 
yards of those countries, on account of the vines being grown close together 
