Imperial Valley press and the Imperial press., 1906-12-22
se,y plot.

and wrong way of making a cutting. A hand pruning shears should be used that has good blade, preferably rec movable, with bolt that can be set, thus keeping the blade from being too tight or too loose, with a coil spring that is lively and strong enough te force the shears open after an ordinary cut ting is made. Then there should be some sort of device on the handle to fasten them shut when notin use to pre- serve the sharpness of the blade and to avoid injury.
 Now to the cutting. There shonld be reason for every cut that is made. The wood of the vine is hollow and pithy ex- cept at the joints or nodes. At the nodes the membrane intercepts the pith. The amateur will probably clip the branch at any point between the nodes. All the tissues between that point and the node remaining above will die. The proper place to clip is at point about a quarter of all inch below the bud, with the blade of the shears toward the oper- ator and the bud away from him. The cutting is much more quickly and accu- rately made if done in this way. The cut that determines the end of the cut tina should be made in the same manner quarter of an inch above the last bud.
 Great confusion exists as to the proper length of the cutting. Cuttings are seen varying in length from ten to twenty four inches. There must be right and wrong length for cuttings. The cut ting should be long enough to contain sufficient amount of plant food tor the needs of the young plant, with sufficient nodes for proper root development and buds for the development of the shoot. Ten or twelve inches is long enough to provide these essentials. Anything over this increases the cost of growing the vine in the nursery and planting 1t out i'll the vineyard. The wood selected for cutting should be ripe. By ripe is meant it should have brown covering, which will break away showing green ish cast underneath when the twig is twisted abruptly and finally the twig breaks. Any wood which does not show these qualities is not ripe. Wood show ing greenish cast is not ripe. The size should range from three-eig ghths to three fourths of an inch ill it's greatest diame' ter. Long jointed or suckery wood or | wood with deep grooves in it should not be used. The best wood to use is short iointed with about five nodes to a cut ting of twelve inches in length. The cuttings should be tied in bundles of about one hundred and fifty with rope or wire and heeled in, butts up, in trench with at least from six inches to foot of soil over them. They should be placed butts up so that the sap will be encouraged to flow and hasten heal ing at the upper end.
 There will be some action and cal lous will form over the end of the cut ting. This callous is the first essential of a good vine. It has nothing to do with the formation of roots. It takes from two to four weeks for the callous to form and harden, after which the cut ting should be planted in the nursery. They should not be left in the trench until the shoots begin to grow. In I'm perial Valley the nursery should be irri- gated before planting out is done and should be thoroughly moist, but not wet enough to be boggy. Rows may be laid out with blow to a depth of about two inches less than the cutting. The cut ting should be pressed into the bottom of the furrow away from the land side. This pressing down makes the contact hard under the cutting, thus insuring an ample supply of moisture, which is necessary to the formation of a good root system, which should form principally at the first node or joint above the cal lous. Then another furrow may be plowed, throwing the dirt up closely about the vine. When the operation is complete there should be but one bud showing and if the soil is of such a tex ture it will not bake or crust, even this Al