Vermont phÅ“nix. [volume] (Brattleboro, Vt.) 1834-1955, 1882-03-10
Agricultural.


An apple tree that bears a crop of inferior
and comparatively worthless fruit, If grated,
would as well yield full crop Of some choice
variety. Two hours spent in pruning and
grating young and thrifty tree will convert
what probably would otherwise be nearly or
quite worthless into valuable property; but it
will generally be from FIVE to ten years before
anything of much account is realized from the
two hours labor, and this is one reason why
so many trees yield poor fruit. We dislike to
wait so long for a return for our labor. Yet
we believe there is no work to be done on the
farm that will pay better than grating all the
apple trees that are not too old or that do not
already bear choice fruit If the trees are
we'll cared for, they will pay great interest on
the cost of grating for all the time that we
have to wait for the fruit
We feel competent to give advice on this
subject, because we have hundred or more
young trees that we have been about to graft
every spring for the last ten years; and if we
had done it the first year of the ten, and TAX
en- good care of them thereafter, they would
have been worth more than ten times their
present value. That theory and practice are
sometimes strangely at variance is no valid
objection to theory. Almost any farmer
knows how to graft apple trees. We are not
the only one who sometimes fails 20 do as
well as he knows; there are thousands of
trees in nearly every township which are al
most worthless for the want of grating and
a little care, when no work on the farm would
insure more certain and valuable reward
fbau tho ~ thnpn troa ic nni al pvax
necessary that they should stand in cultivated
fields, or that fertilizers should be applied to
the land in some situations they will yield
paying crops without special cultivation ex-
cept grating and pruning. If any proof of
this is wanting, we refer to the record of
Henry s. Kenney's orchard in former issue
of The PHOENIX, from which it will be seen
that he gathered last fall over one hundred
barrels of choice Baldwins and Greetings
from an orchard of less than three acres
which had never been cultivated or fertilized
by any artificial means.
This is the season for grating; the opera
ton may be performed now, or at any time
up to the first week in May. If cions are to
be kept any length of time before setting
they should be cut before the buds begin to
swell and placed where they will not dry. If
any one is convinced that he has trees which
should be grated, and decides to graft them
this spring, he will need some grating wax,
and here are directions for makingit Three
parts resin, three parts beeswax and two parts
tallow; or "a cheaper way, four parts good
clear resin, two parts beeswax and one part
tallow. When the ingredients are all melted
and mixed pour into pail of cold water, SO
that the wax may harden sufficiently to be
worked and pulled like molasses candy. If
used in cold weather, it will be necessary to
keep it in warm water; and in hot weather
cold water will be needed For nursery graft
ing this wax is sometimes melted and spread
on narrow strips of cloth, which are wound
around the graft