In my last paper I stated the manner in which grapes should be planted in garden plots and small pieces of ground, with a fair prospect of yielding fruit, if properly pruned and attended to as they should be in the future. The treat-ment of the grape vine, pruning, training, stopping the laterals, or "nipping in the thieves," as they are called, and taking off the superabundant fruit, often deters many from planting the vine at all. There is so much charlatanry expressed by some concerning the manner of treating the grape, that many persona are inclined to think no one but a professed gardener can successfully cultivate the grape. Now this is not so, as my own experience in grape culture has convinced me that any one with common intelligence, and a wish to raise good grapes in their garden or border, can do so. "How shall the vines I have planted be pruned?" Simply by pruning in such manner that new wood may be grown every year for the next year's bearing, and the old bearing wood removed, or cut away.

If you have planted your vines twelve feet apart, for a trellis, (as I suppose you have,) and you wish to train them as uprights, upon the same, you will with a sharp knife cut in the young vines two or three eyes, till you can get two vigorous canes, ten or twelve feet long, branching say about twenty inches from the ground. Next, cut off these canes, leaving each one six feet long. Place these canes in a horizontal position, and tie them to the lower bar of the trellis. Every eye on these canes will, if healthy, send upwards the bearing branches.

Cut in every other one of these upright branches every year. As your vines grow older, and more vigorous, a second system of horizontal canes may be grown above the first. The trellis should be about nine feet high.

If your vines are grown by training to stakes, as in the vineyard system, you will then use what is termed the Bow and Spur System. By this manner of train-ing, the young vines should be cut in two or three buds, till two canes are grown ten or twelve feet in length, which should branch about one foot from the ground. Cut off one of these canes just above the first joint, near the main stem. Remove carefully from the other stem all the side shoots, and bend it into the form of a bow, by bringing the extreme, or cut end, to the stake, near the main stem, and tie the same firmly to the stake with bass matting. The upper portion of the bow is to be tied firmly to the top of the stake in like manner.

A new cane will grow from the spur of the cane cut off and will form your bearing cane for the next year. The next year you will cut off the cane that has borne you fruit this year, and this course of alternating you will practice every year. By this process of training you secure to yourself the new bearing wood, which is of so much importance, and which is, in fact, the principal object in pruning. The above has been the course of treatment pursued by myself and in most cases with good and remunerative success. If you are desirous of testing the truth or falsity of the above, you may be sure of one thing; your Vines will always be in a healthy condition, and if the finest fruit the vine is capable of producing is not yours, I can not tell you the reason "Why you will not get it." You most surely have used the means to procure ft, and without doubt will receive the recompense of your labor. In some future number of the Practical Papers, I shall treat of the manner of "stopping the thieves," thinning out the grapes, and other matters relating to grape culture not important to the cultivation of the grape in small plots or gardens, enough having already been stated in these papers to enable any one who may wish it a good degree of success.

Note

Olapod would desire the readers of the "Practical Papers" to understand that the omission of the Delaware grape vine in his selected list of vines, in paper No. V., was entirely accidental. He thinks it one of the best grapes raised.

Some little explanation may be deemed necessary by some, to the proper understanding of the use and quantity of the materials in the border. I give the quantity used by me from the written notes of my experiments, viz.: I placed in the trench for the drainage of the border, one bushel of oyster shells - cost of carrying home. Upon these I placed fifty pounds of beef bones, obtained generally for one dollar per hundred pounds. Upon these bones 1 place from one peck to one peck and a half of wood ashes: cost, twenty cents per bushel. Upon the ashes I place one quart of granulated or fine bone-dust, at a cost of twenty to twenty-five cents. Upon these latter I place six inches of good garden mould; and upon this mould I set out my vines, carefully spreading out the roots, and cover the same with a compost composed of one half garden mould and the other half scrapings from the road. I did not deem it necessary to state in my article that the 6oil would naturally wash into the bones and shells, and become partially incorporated with the mass, supposing that any one would infer the fact from a careful reading of my article.

I intended to avoid all confusion of ideas, by the statement of a practical, repeated experiment, with me a successful one, the truth or fallacy of which any one disposed can try with an outlay to themselves not exceeding two dollars, provided they prepare the trench themselves. I will warrant this plan will prove successful, and after their vine has grown in this border two years, they will find it exceedingly hard for them to pull it up by the roots with their hands, so deeply and thoroughly will they have become incorporated with the composition of the border.

[Olapod's explanation does not render the matter clear to our understanding, if taken in connection with his former article. The quantity of each material used, as here given, is a considerable aid, but the sum total would fill but a small hole, "through whice and out of which," as Fox Meadow expresses it, a grape vine would find its way in leas than two years. Olapod directs a trench to be made four to six feet wide, and three feet deep, and filled two thirds full of oyster shells, bone dust, wood ashes, lime, broken bones, etc., over which is to be placed six inches of garden mould. Now suppose this trench to be twenty feet long, (and few will be shorter,) and we leave Olapod to ealculate the cost of filling it two thirds full of the materials named. Our figures make it amount to a pretty round sum. When Olapod has furnished this calculation, we should be glad to have him make two or three other points plain, so that we can understand him fairly. We shall then have some criticisms for No. VI. As the matter stands at present, there is a wide difference between us.

We are glad to know that the omission of the Delaware was accidental. - Ed;]