Cattina Back. In early spring, before growth begins, boys go through the rows and cut the tops off of the trees, leaving a few niches of stem on each above the Baldwin bud. When the bud has made a growth of an inch or two, the main stub above it is removed. Now, the nursery man is ready to begin to count the age of his apple trees. Two or three-vea•-old trees in his catalogue means counting from the date the buds began to grow. Two or three seasons of growth in the nurs ery rows ate needed to prepare the trees for customers. The first year, the )(lid sends up a single, leafy shoot. The next year it lengthens and branches. All its side shoots are rubbed off until the main stein is as high as the mibranched trunk of the tree should be. Thu next year the top is shaped, three or four shoots being left to form the main branches. All shoots starting out of the stock below \•here the bud was set are removed, as they would bear fruit of the mongrel, seedling type.
instead of budding, grafting is also practiced in the mak ing of apple trees, and in changing them from one variety to another. It differs from budding not in kind but in degree. It consists in setting a scion, is a twig bearing one or more buds, into the stock. The union of the cambiums of the stock and the scion is the aim of the process. Grafting is usualiy practiced on larger stocks, budding on smaller ones. Read The Alaking-Over of Fruit Root grafting is now very common in the making of apple trees. The prairie states produce flue, long-rooted seedling trees in a single season. These are bought in the fall, stored in cellars, and grafted at the convenience of the nurseryman during the winter. The strongest trees are made by "whole-root" gi:alting. wherein the scion is set in the crown (just where the root and stein join) and the whole root is left. Piece-root " grafting is making two or three pieces of each root, and setting a scion in one end of each piece. The number of trees may thus he increased. but they are weaker and slower of growth than are the \vliole-rooted trees. The union of scion and stock in root grafting is best accompl,ished by the whip graft. The ends of the scion and the stuck are both cut slanting and then split in the middle for a short distance. The cleft of one is then spread by inserting the tongue of the other. The spring of the wood is by some thought to be sufficient to hold the scion in place while the parts knit together. But more commonly the union is bound. The best material is knitting cotton that has been soaked in inched wax. This does not need to be tied, as the coils stick fast. Root grafts are packed in sand or moss till spring, when they are set in the nursery rows. It is easy to see that these trees have a year's start of the budded trees, though they began life at the same time.
Peach Trees. The fresh pits of peaches ate generally laid out over \V inter so that the frost may crack them. They are planted in rich soil and carefully cultivated. By August they should he ready to bud. as the peach is a lusty grower. (-;-rafting is rarely practiced out peach trees. as the wood is pithy. which makes the union of scion and graft imperfect. in the south, it is a frequent practice to bud in June peach trees from pits planted in February. It is not unusual to set out orchards of trees in the fall which have grown shoots three to five feet high front buds set the previous June. No other tree is so pre
cocif ins as the peach. For orchard planting. no peach tree should be bought that is more than two years old front the pit,— one year front the bud. People who pay high prices for three-year-old peach trees, believing that they are getting trees of extra, quality, are sorely cheated. Such trees are always failures, compared with the younger ones.
btrml 7' rees. If a slow-growing stock has set upon it a bud m a scion Of a rapidly-growing variety, a dwarf tree is produced. The stuck starves the top into conformity with its habit. Dwarf pears are made by grafting pear scions upon quince stocks. The Paradise is a little crab apple tree of France. That is the stock of most of our dwarf apple trees. Plums, cherries, and as host of ornamental trees are dwarfed.
The top is seen to exert an influence upon the root. For instance, a Northern Spy scion set on a Greening stock will change the char acter of the roots front the shallow. spreading system characteristic of the Greening to the strong, deep. tap-rooted system of the Spy. In dwarf trees there is a tendency to become " standard,'' i. e., ordinary sized, and care must be taken by the grower to keep the trees down. This may be done by printing the roots, or by keeping them uramped in boxes or puts. In orchards, the method is to keep dwarf trees severely " headed in," i.e., pruned back to a small close top. Many obser vations have been made, but the principles underlying the interaction between stuck and scion have not vet been fully determined.
The large size sometimes attained by dwarf trees is often due to their being sot so low in the ground that the stem above the scion strikes root. The top is thus supplied with roots of its own kind. The tree then gradually takes on the character of the tree from which the scion was cut. Dwarf trees are a passion with the Japanese people. They have forest trees centuries old growing in pots. Their gnarled and venerable forms are no larger than an ordinary potted geranium. To us, dwarfed ornamental trees are merely grotesque and interesting. Among frnit trees dwarfs tend to be more productive than standards. They take up less room, the quality of their fruit is often finer, and picking the fruit is much easier than from the larger trees. These are the reasons why they are so much grown.
Weeping Trees. Weeping elms. mountain ashes. beeches, and the rest, are generally made by grafting scions of weeping trees upon stocks of upright, closely-related varieties. 'They are perpetuated also by cut tings. The notion that a weeping tree is made by planting an upright one with its roots in the air and its top in the ground seems too absurd to take notice of. But it is actually believed by some people of ordinary intelligence, and very generally by the ignorant. I have also heard it said that weeping trees were the result of setting buds upside down. It would be interesting to test this by experiment.
Other Orpathenfitls. V21 riegated, cut-leaved, colored, and other forms of trees beautiful or interesting are made in the nursery just, as fruit trees are: by grafting or budding. or are grown from cuttings. Some few come true to type from seed, but this is exceptional. seedlings from ornamental trees are likely to be reversions to the original wild types, just as fruit trees are.