Canopy Splitting (or) Pigs in Space

Forget about Eisenmeyer's Swine Science in dowdy old hard-covered tomes published in some backwoods mid-west State of fly-over America and read on.

Once upon a time there was a swine with strange habits. You see, he really didn't want to be a pig, so all the long day he would peer through the dirty claustrophobic bars of his particular sty, and dream of being a classical ballet dancer, with classical non-cloven hooves and an ever so delicate elegance of gait. And, what's more, he'd practice. Every evening after the last late bucket of swill was splashed into his grubby little trough, he'd surreptitiously tip-toe about his peculiarly smelly sty, perched on his hind trotters imagining, for all the world, that the dung passage sliming dimly in the yellow, incandescent light along the front of his grimy little sty, was a bank of spot lights, and the slats of his ugly, dangerous floor, the firm, strong, clean, safe stage of Madison Square Garden itself.

However, on Monday evening, he really did have an audience, not of a paying, more of a slaying kind! Vladimir Lemon, a party oligarc of a scientific-non-empathetic background, noticed something of immense practical and ideological interest to the local back-fatter industry. He noticed that Borat Porker, which was his, the pigs, stage name, balanced on his hind legs, as he was, took up much less horizontal space than other ordinary pigs;.. which he most definitely was not!
     
And so, it happened that still later that evening, Vlad composed a paper entitled “The Ideological Importance of Vertical Displacement of Swine-in-Situ” which he submitted for publication to the KBG inspired Pork Talk News newsletter. The following Thursday, the 22nd of the month, two days after his actual observation, his practical paper on pig performance and perching possibilities was mass produced in Porkda, the official Party magazine, for all to read. In essence, comrade Vlad proposed that a swine supervisor could, by arranging pigs vertically, halve accommodation costs. Or looked at it another way, he could double production per unit area of sty space. A revolution was born! Vlad was commanded to investigate other areas of animal accommodation; such as the application of a similiar approach in Party mental hospitals on prime residential land, and the (by now) obvious advantages in these times of economic restraint and rousing political rallies, of having the baying populace stand rather than sit in Party mega-domes. After all, this arrangement already worked well in Party prisons.

From a viticultural point of view, Vlads divide and concur approach, applied to pruning, would also work well. Vertical separation (Scott-Henry style)  of the canopy of the vine allows the beneficial effect of light to enter into the potentially mysterious and dark bud-renewal zone and enhances the ripening process through improved light exposure. There are also great advantages for prophylactic spray penetration in disease control. You don't need to saturate the entire canopy with, say, systemic bunch rot fungicides as one well directed spray of soft and safe organic fungicide can be applied directly to the exposed bunches. And there's the added advantage of increased production of healthy fruit.

The dormant vines may look a little strange at this time of year, and hand pruning takes more care, but this is one revolution in pruning systems which looks like it takes the bacon.