covering shoots of the present season's growth.
Strong plants are seldom obtained from summer-layering and it is never
safe to attempt to grow more than one or two plants from a shoot. The
most forceful culture possible must be given summer-layered plants
after the separation from the parent vine. It is very generally agreed
that plants from summer-layers not only do not give good plants, but
that the parent vine is injured in taking an offspring from it in this
way.

_Layering to fill vacancies in the vineyard._

There is sure to be an occasional gap even in the best vineyard. Young
plants set in vacancies must compete with neighboring full-grown
vines, and often in a bit of land so unfavorable that it may have been
the cause of the demise of the original occupant. Under these
circumstances, the newcomer stands a poor chance for life. A plant
introduced by layering a strong cane from a near-by vine has little
difficulty in establishing itself on its own roots, after which it can
be separated from the parent. Such layering is best done by taking in
early spring a strong, unpruned cane from an adjoining plant in the
same row and covering an end joint six inches deep in the vacant
place, but leaving sufficient wood on the end of the cane to turn up
perpendicularly out of the soil. This free end becomes the new plant
and by the following fall or spring may be separated from its parent.
Not infrequently the young plant bears fruit the second season on its
own roots. This method is of especial value in small plantations,
whereby the trouble of ordering one or two plants is avoided and the
advantage of early fruiting is obtained.

GRAFTING

Since grafting grapes is intimately connected with stocks, the growing
of which is a modern practice, grafting is thought of as a new process
in growing this fruit. Quite to the contrary, it is an old practice.
Cato, the sturdy old Roman grape-grower who lived nearly two hundred
years before Christ, speaks of grafting grapes, although Theophrastus,
the Greek philosopher, wrote a hundred years before "the vine cannot
be grafted upon itself." However, until it became necessary to grow
Vinifera grapes on resistant stocks to avoid the ravages of
phylloxera, grafting the grape was not at all common among
vineyardists and is not now except where vines susceptible to
phylloxera must be grown in consort with roots resistant to this
insect, or to modify the vigor of the top by a stock more v