American Grape Training: An account of the leading forms now in use of Training the American Grapes

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by Liberty Hyde Bailey

THIS LITTLE book has grown out of an attempt to teach the principles and methods of grape training to college students. I have found such teaching to be exceedingly difficult and unsatisfactory. It is impossible to firmly impress the lessons by mere lectures. The student must apprehend the principles slowly and by his own effort. He must have time to thoroughly assimilate them before he attempts to apply them. I therefore cast about for books which I could put before my class, but I at once found that there are very few succinct accounts of the subjects of grape pruning and training, and that none of our books portray the methods which are most largely practised in the large grape regions of the east. My only recourse, therefore, was to put my own notes into shape for print, and this I have now done. And inasmuch as all grape-growers are students, I hope that the simple account will find a use beyond the classroom.

This lack of adequate accounts of grape training at first astonished me, but is not strange after all. It must be remembered that the cultivation of the native grape is of very recent origin. There are many men who can remember its beginning in a commercial way. It seldom occurs to the younger generation, which is familiar with the great vineyards in many states, that the Concord is yet scarcely forty years old, and that all grape growing in eastern America is yet in an experimental stage. Progress has been so rapid in recent years that the new methods outstrip the books. The old horizontal arm spur system, which is still the chief method in the books, has evolved itself into a high renewal training, which is widely used but which has not found its way into the manuals. The Kniffin type has outgrown its long period of incubation, and is now taking an assured place in vineyard management. So two great types, opposed in method, are now contending for supremacy, and they will probably form the basis of all future developments. This evolution of American grape training is one of the most unique and signal developments of our modern horticulture, and its very recent departure from the early doubts and trials is a fresh illustration of the youth and virility of all horticultural pursuits in North America.

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