The Oroville weekly gazette. [volume] (Oroville, Wash.) 1905-19??, 1915-12-31
GRATING.
A Paper read before the Farmers I'm.
ion mt OrOville, December Is,
1916.

1
The grating Of fruit trees is not
only skilled trade. but an art as we'll,
its success depending largely upon the
trained judgment of the workman. To
render this art effective and to give 1t
greater measure of efficiency, and
therefore OF success, should be the am
bltion of every person interested in the
development of the orchard industry.
And it is for the purpose of promoting
better knowledge of certain phases
OF the grating process that this ar
ticle is written.
The writer would have every fruit
| CRATER be an artist in his line, doing
his work with efficiency and dispatch,
with certainty of maximum results,
and with an eye to symmetrical
growth that will not only give uniform
production, but create pleasing land
scape as well. Believing that mans
natural desire is for pleasing effect
will urge him on to develop his ideal
of tree, or an orchard, let US confine
this article to the technical side of the
subject, since beauty can only be at
tanned by the use of right methods.
No art ever flourished that had a
faulty technique. No matter how noble
the ambition of the artist, the lack of
a true technique will prevent the re-
alization of his ideal. Our ideals of an
orchard can only be realized as we
possess knowledge of methods and a
skill in their application
To go through an orchard and find
from Is to 20 per cent of the gratis
complete failures is amost disheart-
ening experience to the orchardist, and
would seem to give a black eye to the
reputation of the man who did the
grating, yet year after year men who
uniformly have such proportion of
failures are found at work, and are
even regarded as highly skilled per-
sons. 1t certainly is a poverty stricken
philosophy that accepts such results
and says that anything better is hui
namely impossible.
Better results are possible and the
CRATER should be so certain of this
that he can insure high percentage
of successful gratis. 1t only requires
the adoption of technically correct
method and the development of reas-
onably good judgment. Since good
judgment is primarily an offspring of
Experience, let us discuss only the cor
rect method, or at least, the best
method known to the writer.
| Aside from the developed judgment
of the workman, the determining ele-
ment of the successful CRATER are:
| first, healthy trees; second, vigorous
| scions; third, proper time of grating;
fourth, skill with the knife and fifth, a
first class wax, properly applied. Of
| these. only care to discuss the Gee
ond, third and fifth. Obviously, I'M
healthy trees should not be grated
upon, it is better to dig them up, and
| skill with the knife, THAT is, the a0il-
/ ny " PAOpCi tut a. 81 dlIJ, dCPChuo
upon long practice and a good whet-
stone.
Second, sciols-Scions should be Sc
lected from known healthy trees alone
and the selection should be made at
the time of pruning, when the bud
wood is dormant. The selector should
keep in mind the fact that good quail
tiles tend to become better, and bad
qualities tend to become worse. For
that reason, if for no other, he should
have a large working knowledge OF
the orchard that he selects from, in
fact, he should possess a condensed
but comprehensive history of each
tree used as a parent tree. The habit
of growth of each tree he can observe
for himself, and he should remember
that scions cut from upright stock
produces upright growth, while scions
cut from stocks of spreading habit
will produce a spreading growth. Up
right and spreading scion stems
should be kept separate by all means
and furnished to the CRATER properly
labeled, so that in building the tree he