Cañon City record., 1906-03-22
THE TOP-CRAFTlNC
OF APPLE TREES

by w. 5. Coburn, president or State
Board of Horticulture, Hotchkiss, Colo.
This method is confined to the apple
and pear. You will see it's advantages
over the old way of planting the origi-
nal tree of the variety desired. We
all know that all apple trees are not
of the same hardness, thrifty growers
and iong-lived. We will take, for in
stance, three of the kinds most in de-
mand for commercial purposes and
largely grown, especially on the west
ern slope of this state: the Jonathan,
Winesap and Rome Beauty. The JON
athan is only considered half hardy,
but one of the best early winter va
rieties grown, and in great demand for
Christmas and New Years. The tree,
while young seems to be fair grower
and yields large crops of good sized
apples, but at the age of fifteen or
twenty years we find many failing.
The tree stops growing, the foliage
becomes small and often light color
ed, the fruit while the tree is full also
stops growing and very little of it will
get to a marketable size. Close exam
ination fails to reveal any disease, and
the conclusion arrived at is that it,
like some of the human family, is
short-lived For that reason | would
not plant the Jonathan tree.
The Rome Beauty tree is the next
one we will take under consideration,
the fruit of which is of large size, fine
appearance, good quality, and its sea-
son is the last of February and March
under the ordinary way of keeping APP
pies, but when put into cold storage
comes out in April and May in fine
shape.
The tree when first set is an upright
rank grower; in fact, it grows so
thrifty that unless precautionary mea
sures are taken TO stop its growth and
ripen up the wood the trunk will often
crack open from the limbs to the
ground, killing the tree. We have Of
ten seen as many as ten acres of this
variety dying off every winter until at
the end of five years there were none
left. For this reason we would not
plant Rome Beauty tree.
| The next under consideration is the
Winesap, an apple of rather medium
size, best quality, long keeper and
greatly in demand. 1t is generally un-
derstood by all fruit growers that to
grow the Winesap successfully 1t must
be planted on very rich, deep soil for
best results as the apple is naturally
rather understood.
We will ask the average planter II
he has ever noticed the Winesap trees
as they came from the nursery, ready
| to plant in the orchard. 1t is one of
the poorest growing trees in the nur-
sery-sprawling limbs, one-sided, and
the poorest rooted; three or four main
roots often growing all on one side
with few fibrous or lateral roots. For
this reason its capacity for gathering
| the fertiliZing qualities of the sur
rounding soil is limited and when the
| tree gets TO be fifteen or twenty years
| old, unless severely pruned and thin
ned out, the fruit will be too small for
market. For this reason. it behooves
us to seek a remedy and the only rem
edy that we have been able to pre-
scribe is to graft on the thriftiest
| growing tree.
Topgrafting has been practiced for
hundreds of years and very little i'm
provement has been made on the old
style of splitting the stock which Is a
very bungling and unsatisfactory way.
and unreliable.
Having planted a large variety in
a new country where fruit was an ex-
pertinent and all kinds grew and ma
tured to perfection, we naturally
wanted to grow few of the best