The grape-grower takes great liberties with Nature in training his plants. No other fruit is so completely transformed by the grower's art from its natural habit of growth. Happily, the grape endures cutting well, and the pruner may rest assured that he may work his will in pruning his vines, following to his heart's desire a favorite method with little fear of seriously injuring his vines. Because of its accommodation to the desires of man in the disposition of the vine, there are many methods of training the grape; there being in the commercial vineyards of eastern America a dozen or more. However, the differences and similarities are so marked that the several methods fall into a simple classification which makes conspicuous their chief features. Thus, all of the methods fall under two chief heads: (1) The disposition of shoots; (2) the disposition of canes.
The disposition of shoots.
Bearing shoots are disposed of in three ways in training grapes; shoots upright, shoots drooping, and shoots horizontal. The terms explain themselves, but the three methods need amplification since their adoption is not optional with growers but depends on several circumstances.
Shoots are trained upright in several methods in which two or more arms or canes are laid to right and left, sometimes horizontally, sometimes obliquely along or across horizontal wires. As the shoots grow upward, they are tied to wires above. The upright methods are supposed to distribute the bearing wood more evenly on the vines and to insure greater uniformity in the fruit. In the upright methods, also, the canes and arms are left nearer the ground, which is thought to be an advantage in small, weak or slow-growing varieties. Delaware, Catawba, Iona and Diana are examples of varieties thought to grow best when trained to one of the upright methods.
In the several methods in which the shoots droop, however the canes may be disposed, the shoots are not tied but are allowed to droop at will. These methods are comparatively new but are being rapidly adopted because of several marked advantages. Usually one less wire can be used in a drooping method than in an upright one; since the shoots are not tied, much labor is saved in summer tying; the ground can be tilled with less danger to the vines; and there is less sun-scalding of the fruit, since the pendant foliage protects the clusters. Grape-growers generally agree that strong-growing varieties like Concord, Niagara, Brighton, Diamond and most of the hybrids between European grapes and native species grow best when the shoots droop.
Shoots are trained horizontally in but one recognized method, the Hudson Horizontal, to be described in detail later. Since this method is all but obsolete, there is still less reason for discussing it here, the expressive name sufficing for present purposes.
Disposition of canes.
There are many recognized methods of disposing of the canes in training the grape. The chief of these are discussed in the pages that follow, their names being set down for the present in the classification that follows.