Grapes -- Varieties -- United States; Viticulture -- United States
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
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."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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