!N"ew Yoek Agricultural Experiment Station. 503 



roots are removed, it should be cut. It may be necessary to sever 

 the roots of cious twice during the iirst season, each time earthing 

 up as at first though not as high. The mistake was made, and here 

 the novice will often fail, of putting some of the grafts too deep, as 

 the result of which some vines grew on their own roots and the 

 object of grafting was thwarted. Plate LXV shows such vines. 



The earth w^as not leveled about the vines until the following 

 spring, but served during the winter to protect the poorly lignified 

 grafts from frost and to prevent blowing out of the cions. 

 The vines were not staked the first year after grafting but this 

 would have been a profitable precaution since a number broke 

 either at the graft or more often just below, Avhere the stock was 

 frequently smaller than the cion, possibly from the fact that roots 

 had been allowed to remain too long on the cion. Many suckers 

 appeared from the stocks, especially from the St. George, and were 

 removed as quickly as the work could conveniently be done. The 

 suckering of St. George must be set down as a serious fault of this 

 stock. Plate LXVI illustrates the suckering habit. 



The plan to graft all vines m situ had to be abandoned, as before 

 stated, because the loss of many plants made apparent the necessity 

 of having on hand a surplus of grafted vines for the first iew 

 years of the experiment. To secure such a surplus it was neces- 

 sary to resort to bench-grafting. 



Bench-grafting. — The cions for the bench-grafts were pre- 

 pared as for the grafting in the field. The root-stocks were the 

 same as those set in the field but received, of course, some pre- 

 liminary preparation. Eoots and tops were cut back severely, the 

 former to a few inches in length — we now cut back to an inch, 

 for w^hen longer they prove troublesome in handling. The mistake 

 w^as made of grafting some of the stocks on the growth of the pre- 

 vious year the result being a great number of suckers which would 

 not have grown, in such numbers at least, had all been grafted on 

 the wood of the original cutting. The bench-grafting was done in 

 late March and early April after which the grafts were stored 

 away for callousing. 



