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Pruning Frost-Nipped Vines. March 22, 1830 Herbemont was not above dissembling to increase the reading interest of his letters. In this elaboration of his April 20, 1828, epistle on pruning, he begins in the apologetic mode, confessing fallibilities and inaccuracies, while confirming and strengthening the point of his earlier letter—that pruning vines in spring when they are prone to sap bleeding has no injurious effect on them. In a sly coda, the end of the letter reveals the height of his authority on agricultural matters in the eyes of the reading public when he disavows the title “Dr.” given him by a correspondent in North Carolina. Published in American Farmer 12, no. 3 (April 2, 1830). On the Vine. Columbia, S. C. March 22, 1830 j. k. skinner, esq. Dear Sir,—When I have written occasional weak essays on the culture of the vine, and sometimes on other subjects connected with agriculture, it was done certainly with a view of scattering thinly the career of my life with some specks of usefulness . I must, therefore, most sincerely regret that I may have been unwittingly the teacher of some errors. Your correspondent “M.” in the American Farmer of the 12th inst. No. 52, Vol. 11, has had the goodness to make some excuse for me for having said that the repruning of grape vines after they had been nipped by the frost was attended with no injury to them, although they bled much in consequence of it. The practice being recommended in some French books induced me to try the experiment, and although I have used it every spring for six or seven years past, without stint of the pruning knife, I am bound to declare that it has not in one single instance been followed by any serious injury or diminution of the crop that I could judge of. The bleeding is certainly alarming in its appearance, and it has sometimes injured the first bud below the cut; but as at this season vegetation is very rapid, and that the vine does not bleed when it is in full foliage, the bleeding 173 soon stopped of itself and in a short time the vines looked as if no such late pruning had been effected. Notwithstanding this, and even if I had not read of some undoubted cases of injury done by it, I would still recommend any operation by which the bleeding might be prevented. That which seems to promise the most effectual remedy is that proposed by Mr. Andrew Parmentier,1 viz: the application of pulverized plaister of paris to the wound immediately after it has been made. I presume it is the plaister as it is prepared for cement by calcinations, by which its absorbent quality is probably much increased, together with the property it has of hardening very soon, or of setting, as it is I believe, technically termed. The instances of the vine being greatly injured, as given by your correspondent “M.” come in such a shape as precludes any doubt on the subject.2 I have also tried rubbing off the frostbitten shoots; but was not pleased with the effects. In the first place, the bleeding was not fully prevented; but only considerably lessened, 2dly, the efforts of nature in this case is to repair the evil as much as possible, and it frequently induces weakly buds to be produced and expanded in the place of those broken off, to the great detriment of the buds below, which, without this, would become as stout and bear as fully as the upper ones would have done, if the frost had not injured them. Shoots that are injured by frost in the slightest degree never recover fully so as to become of suitable size and appearance, neither do they ever produce fine fruit. For these reasons, I invariably lop them off, and the lower buds readily supply their place. It is proper here to notice that, always anticipating injury by late frosts, I leave, in pruning, at least two buds more than I otherwise should. Should no frost happen to do the mischief I am prepared for, which has never yet occurred to me, I would rub off the supernumerary shoots, beginning at the lowest ones; for the upper ones are always the best. By following the above stated practice, I have never failed in obtaining a good crop, so far as the injury by the frost was concerned. To this there was, however, one...

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