Fig. 13. Vine ready for pruning; i, the stem; g, arms; d, canes; s, shoots; b, spurs. The faint lines near the bases of the canes indicate the points where they should be pruned off in the winter, leaving spurs for the production of shoots the following season.
Spur renewal.
In renewing by spurs, a permanent arm is established to right and left on the canes. Shoots on this arm are not permitted to remain as canes but are cut back to spurs in the dormant pruning. Two buds are left at this pruning, both of which will produce bearing shoots; the lower one, however, is not suffered to do so but is kept to furnish the spur for the next season. The shoot from the upper bud is cut away entirely. When this process is carried on from year to year, the spurs become longer and longer until they become unwieldy. Occasionally, however, happy chance permits the selection of a shoot on the old wood for a new spur. Failing in this, a new arm must be laid down and the spurring goes on as before. The objections to renewing by spurs are: it is often difficult to replace spurs with new wood, and the bearing portion of the vine gets farther and farther from the trunk. For these reasons, spur-renewing is generally in disfavor with commercial grape-growers, though it is still used in one or two prominent methods of training, as will be discovered in this discussion. [Figure 13] shows a vine ready for pruning.
The Work of Pruning
Fig. 14. A "go-devil" for collecting prunings.
The pruner may take his choice between several styles of hand pruning-shears with which to do his work. The knife is seldom used except in summer-pruning, and here, more often, the shoots are broken out or pinched out. In winter-pruning, the cane is cut an inch or thereabout beyond the last bud it is desired to leave; otherwise the bud may die from the drying out of the cane. The canes are usually allowed to remain tied to the wires until the pruning is done, though growers who use the Kniffin method of training may cut them loose before they prune. Two men working together do the work of pruning best. The more skilled of the two severs the wood from the bearing vine, leaving just the number of buds desired for the next season's crop. The less skilled man cuts tendrils and severs the cut canes from each other so that the prunings may be moved from the vineyard without trouble by the "stripper."
Not the least of the tasks of pruning is "stripping" the brush and getting it out of the vineyard. The prunings cling to the trellis with considerable tenacity and must be pulled loose with a peculiar jerk, learned by practice, and placed on the ground between the rows. Stripping is done, usually by cheap labor, at any time after the pruning until spring, but must not be delayed until growth starts or the young buds may suffer as the cut wood is torn from the trellis. The brush is hauled to the end of the row by hand or by horse-power applied to any one of a dozen devices used in the several grape regions. One of the best is the device in common use in the Chautauqua vineyards of western New York. A pole, twelve feet long, four inches in diameter at the butt and two at the top, is bored with an inch hole four feet from the butt. A horse is hitched to this pole by a rope drawn through the hole, and the pole, butt to the ground, is then pulled between rows, the small end being held in the right hand. The pole, when skillfully used, collects the brush, which is dumped at the end of the row by letting the small end fly over towards the horse. The "go-devil," shown in [Fig. 14], is another common device for collecting prunings.