Grafting

Categories: HOW TO RAISE A FRUIT TREE

By a process known as _grafting_ you can force your tree to produce

whatever variety of apple you desire. Many people raise fruit trees

directly from seed without grafting. Thus they often produce really

worthless trees. By grafting they would make sure not only of having

good trees rather than poor ones but also of having the particular kind

of fruit that they wish. Hence you must now graft your tree.



Fi st you must decide what variety of apple you want to grow on the

tree. The Magnum Bonum is a great favorite as a fall apple. The Winesap

is a good winter apple, while the Red Astrachan is a profitable early

apple, especially in the lowland of the coast region. The Northern Spy,

AEsop, and Spitzenburg are also admirable kinds. Possibly some other

apple that you know may suit your taste and needs better than any of

these varieties.



If you have decided to raise an AEsop or a Magnum Bonum or a Winesap, you

must now cut a twig from the tree of your choice and graft it upon the

little tree that you have raised. Choose a twig that is about the

thickness of the young tree at the point where you wish to graft. Be

careful to take the shoot from a vigorous, healthy part of the tree.






There are many ways in which you may join the chosen shoot or twig upon

the young tree, but perhaps the best one for you to use is known as

_tongue grafting_. This is illustrated in Fig. 64. The upper part, _b_,

which is the shoot or twig that you cut from the tree, is known as the

_scion_; the lower part, _a_, which is the original tree, is called the

_stock_.



Cut the scion and stock as shown in Fig. 64. Join the cut end of the

scion to the cut end of the stock. When you join them, notice that under

the bark of each there is a thin layer of soft, juicy tissue. This is

called the _cambium_. To make a successful graft the cambium in the

scion must exactly join the cambium in the stock. Be careful, then, to

see that cambium meets cambium. You now see why grafting can be more

successfully done if you select a scion and stock of nearly the same

size.




Showing scion and stock from which it was made]



After fitting the parts closely together, bind them with cotton yarn

(see Fig. 65) that has been coated with grafting wax. This wax is made

of equal parts of tallow, beeswax, and linseed oil. Smear the wax

thoroughly over the whole joint, and make sure that the joint is

completely air-tight.




To make a root graft, cut along the slanting line]



The best time to make this graft is when scion and stock are dormant,

that is, when they are not in leaf. During the winter, say in February,

is the best time to graft the tree. Set the grafted tree away again in

damp sand until spring, then plant it in loose, rich soil.



Since all parts growing above the graft will be of the same kind as the

scion, while all branches below it will be like the stock, it is well to

graft low on the stock or even upon the root itself. The slanting double

line in Fig. 66 shows the proper place to cut off for such grafting.






If you like you may sometime make the interesting and valuable

experiment of grafting scions from various kinds of apple trees on the

branches of one stock. In this way you can secure a tree bearing a

number of kinds of fruit. You may thus raise the Bonum, Red Astrachan,

Winesap, and as many other varieties of apples as you wish, upon one

tree. For this experiment, however, you will find it better to resort to

_cleft grafting_, which is illustrated in Fig. 68.






Luther Burbank, the originator of the Burbank potato, in attempting to

find a variety of apple suited to the climate of California, grafted

more than five hundred kinds of apple scions on one tree, so that he

might watch them side by side and find out which kind was best suited to

that state.