The Vermont watchman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1883-1911, 1885-09-23
agricultural.
T. H. HosklNs, m. D., Editor,
Newport, Vermont.
Grating Apple Trees.

men aI OnlCagO, says an exchange, Il
paper was read by N. II. Albaugh of
Ohio on " Budding and Grating" In
regard to propagating varieties of the
apples, he took position strongly in
favor of grating upon the crown of the
young stock and making only one
graft to root. i" BY adopting crown
grating, almost all the advantages of
budding upon single stocks are secured,
and, in this way, part of the work can
be done in the winter and not all
rushed into the hurry and hustle of
summer. In crown-grafting it is best
to use good, first-class stocks, shorten
ing the tap-root little, leaving nine to
ten inches of roots, and use cions
shorter than piece-root grating, say
about three inches, and make the splice
or union just at the crown or collar of
the seeding. Plant the graft about
one inch below the Joint, leaving two
inches of it above ground. Should any
of the cions fail, the seeding will
throw up a sucker, which can be budded
the same fall and thus have nearly a
perfect stand" When several CRAFTS
are made of one stock by grating on
pieces of the root, as is commonly done,
only forty or fifty per cent of the young
trees live. /" A good many CRAFTS start,
but make very slight growth the first
summer, and are kept down by their
overlapping neighbors in the row, and
eventually go upon the brush-pile."
On the other hand, crown-grafted
stocks will give, under good conditions,
from ninety to ninety-five per cent of
salable trees. These views were con-
firmed by other members. Piece-root
grating should be abandoned.
We fully endorse all that Mr.. AL
baugh says of the crown-grafting of
Seeding apple stocks, and our long ex-
perience in the business of growing
nursery stock and planting orchards
confirms his assertion of the excellence
and long life (under proper conditions)
of apple trees so grown. Yet expert
ence reveals some exceptions to the
general rule. 1t is not well, for in
stance, to crown graft any variety that
is at all tender to the winter cold of
any locality where it is to be planted
in orchard. This is the secret of the
unpopularity of New York trees in
Northern New England. Root-grafted
Baldwins and Greetings, which grow
so thriftily in New York and Ohio and
make such magnificent and productive
orchards there, become black-hearted
and worthless almost at once when set
out in Vermont, New Hampshire and
Maine. The result is that orchardists
of limited experience in these states be-
lieve all such trees to be " a miserable
fraud - and rascally cheat" The
fact is that any variety which is little
tender for particular locality will suf-
fer first in the trunk, and an unsound
trunk makes hopelessly unsound and
unproductive tree. Therefore such va
rieties, so planted, should be top
grated on perfectly healthy and thrifty
stocks adapted to the climate. These
are secured by growing seeding trees
in the nursery for three or four years,
selecting the best of them and setting
them in orchard, to be top-grafted to
the desired tender sorts two or three
years afterwards.
q he hoy
found out Ga little north of the line
where Baldwins, Greetings and Rox-
bury Russets are perfectly hardy that
such is the right way to grow those
desirable kinds where they live, get
the erroneous notion NATURALLY enough,
perhaps) that no grated apple tree
will be healthy unless it is top-grafted
on Seeding stocks. In this they are en-
tirely mistaken.
There is another case in which top
grating is necessary. Some valuable
varieties are very crooked or weak
growers when root-grafted. These need
to be top-grafted in the same way as
above described, in order to get a good
tree. 1t is only wide and long eXpe-
rience that will enable a man to realize
and understand these points in the
science of fruit-growing. Those of less
experience, generalizing from too few
facts, condemn wholly the methods
which they, in their limited experience,
have found unsuited to their own needs.
Even Mr.. Albaugh seems to be not
altogether exempt from this source of
error, since he utterly condemns what
he calls "piece-root grating" Yet
he says he " shortens the root little"
leaving nine or ten inches. But many
strong seeding roots, when carefully
dug, will be nearly or quite twice that
length, so that really Mr.. Albaugh
uses "piece-roots himself. When we
began nursery work we were as apt to
hold by the word of the masters " as
any one, and we, too, used only the
crown ont IN uraft on Rnt dasir n