A favorite recipe, with a practical nurseryman of great experience, is:
This is to be used warm, when grafting in the house.
For out-door work he used the following:
Rosin, four or five parts.
Bees-wax, one and one-half to two parts.
Linseed oil, one to one and one-half.
This is made into a mass to be applied by hand. A very pleasant and neat mode of using the wax is to pour it when melted, upon thin muslin or strong paper, and spread it thin with a spatula. The tissue is then cut into strips of convenient size. The application to cotton yarn for root-grafting, has already been mentioned.
The French use the preparation given below, sufficiently warm to be liquid, but not so hot as to injure the tissues of the tree, and apply it with a brush:
14 Du Breuil, Culture of Fruit Trees; English Translation.
Mr. Du Breuil also refers to Leport's liquid mastic in terms of commendation, but speaks of it as a secret composition.
Downing recommends melting together:
He says, the common wax of the French is
To be boiled together, and laid on with a brush, and for using cold or on strips of muslin, equal parts of tallow, bees-wax, and rosin, some preferring a little more tallow.
J.J. Thomas, whose practical knowledge is proverbial, recommends for its cheapness
Melted together, to be applied warm with a brush, or to be put on paper or muslin, or worked with wet hands into a mass and drawn out into ribbons.
The season for grafting is quite a prolonged one, if we include the period during which it may be done in the house, and the ability we have of retarding the scions by cold, using ice. It should be done while the grafts are dormant, which is at any time from the fall of the leaf until the swelling of the buds. As the grafts would be likely to suffer from prolonged exposure, out-door grafting is done just before vegetation commences in the spring, but may be prolonged until the stocks are in full leaf, by keeping back the scions, in which case, however, there is more danger to the stock unless a portion of its foliage is allowed to remain to keep up the circulation; under these circumstances, too, side-grafting is sometimes used with the same view.
The stone fruits are worked first; cherries, plums, and peaches, then pears and apples. With regard to grafting grapes, there is a diversity of opinion. Some operators prefer very early in the season, as in February, and others wait until the leaves have appeared upon the vine to be grafted.
Scions or Grafts are to be selected from healthy plants of the variety we wish to propagate. They should be the growth of the previous year, of average size, well developed, and with good buds, those having flower buds are rejected. If the shoots be too strong, they are often furnished with poor buds, and are more pithy, and therefore they are more difficult to work and are less likely to grow. Grafts, cut from young bearing orchards, are the best, and being cut from fruiting trees, this enables us to be certain as to correctness of the varieties to be propagated; but they are generally and most rapidly collected from young nursery trees, and as an orchardist or nurseryman should be able to judge of all the varieties he cultivates by the appearance of their growth, foliage, bark, dots, etc., there is little danger in taking the scions from such untested trees.
Time for cutting Scions.—The scions may be cut at any time after the cessation of growth in the autumn, even before the leaves have fallen, until the buds burst in the spring, always avoiding severely cold or frosty weather, because of the injury to the tree that results from cutting at such a time, though the frost may not have injured the scion. The best nurserymen prefer to cut them in the autumn, before they can have been injured by cold. They should be carefully packed in fine earth, sand, or sawdust, and placed in the cellar or cave. The leaves stripped from them, make a very good packing material; moss is often used, where it can be obtained, but the best material is saw-dust. This latter is clean, whereas the sand and soil will dull the knife. If the scions should have become dry and shriveled, they may still be revived by placing them in soil that is moderately moist, not wet—they should not, by any means, be placed in water, but should be so situated that they may slowly imbibe moisture. When they have been plumped, they should be examined by cutting into their tissues; if these be brown, they are useless, but if alive, the fresh cut will look clear and white, and the knife will pass as freely through them as when cutting a fresh twig.
The after-treatment of the grafts consists in removing the sprouts that appear upon the stock below the scion, often in great numbers. These are called robbers, as they take the sap which should go into the scion. It is sometimes well to leave a portion of these as an outlet for excess. When the graft is tardy in its vegetation, and in late grafting, it is always safest to leave some of these shoots to direct the circulation to the part, and thus insure a supply to the newly introduced scion; all should eventually be removed, so as to leave the graft supreme.
It may sometimes be necessary to tie up the young shoot which pushes with vigor, and may fall and break with its own weight before the supporting woody fibre has been deposited; but a much better policy is to pinch in the tip when but a few inches long, and thus encourage the swelling and breaking of the lateral buds, and produce a more sturdy result. This is particularly the case in stock-grafts and in renewing an orchard by top-grafting.
PROPAGATION.—SECTION III.—BUDDING
ADVANTAGES OF—LONG PERIOD FOR—CLAIMS OF GREATER HARDINESS EXAMINED—LATE GROWERS APT TO BURST THE BARK—BUD TENDER SORTS. STOCKS NOT ALWAYS HARDY—PHILOSOPHY OF BUDDING, LIKE GRAFTING, DEPENDS UPON CELL-GROWTH—THE CAMBIUM, OR "PULP"—THE BUD, ITS INDIVIDUALITY—THOMSON QUOTED—UNION DEPENDS UPON THE BUD—SEASON FOR BUDDING—CONDITIONS REQUISITE—SPRING BUDDING—CONDITION OF THE BUDS—BUD STICKS—SELECTION OF—THEIR TREATMENT—RESTORATION WHEN DRY—THE WEATHER—RAINS TO BE AVOIDED—USUAL PERIOD OF GROWTH BY EXTENSION—SUCCESSION OF VARIETIES—CHERRY, PLUM, PEAR, APPLE, QUINCE, PEACH—HOW TO DO IT—DIFFERENT METHODS—AGE OF STOCKS—PREPARATION OF—THE KNIFE—CUTTING THE BUDS—REMOVAL OF THE WOOD—THE AMERICAN METHOD—DIVISION OF LABOR TYING—RING BUDDING—PREPARATION OF SCIONS FOR EARLY BUDDING—IMPROVEMENTS IN TYING—BAST, PREPARATION OF—SUBSTITUTES—NOVEL TIE—WHEN TO LOOSEN THE BANDAGE—HOW DONE—INSPECTION OF BUDS—SIGN OF THEIR HAVING UNITED—KNIGHT'S TWO BANDAGES—WHY LEAVE THE UPPER ONE LONGER. HEADING BACK THE STOCKS—RESUME.
Budding, or inoculating, is the insertion of eyes or buds. This is a favorite method of propagation, which is practiced in the multiplication of a great variety of fruits. The advantages of budding consist in the rapidity and facility with which it is performed, and the certainty of success which attends it. Budding may be done during a long period of the growing season, upon the different kinds of trees we have to propagate. Using but a single eye, it is also economical of the scions, which is a matter of some importance, when we desire to multiply a new and scarce variety.
It has been claimed on behalf of the process of budding, that trees, which have been worked in this method, are more hardy and better able to resist the severity of winter than others of the same varieties, which have been grafted in the root or collar, and also that budded trees come sooner into bearing. Their general hardiness will probably not be at all affected by their manner of propagation; except perhaps, where there may happen to be a marked difference in the habit of the stock, such for instance as maturity early in the season, which would have a tendency to check the late growth of the scion placed upon it—the supplies of sap being diminished, instead of continuing to