39 



111 former papers I have described experience in grafting limbs 

 that were cut back for topworking purposes. I described the distal 

 bark slot and the proximal bark slot for receiving grafts. My whole 

 feeling in this regard has now changed. The proximal bark slot may 

 be employed to advantage at many sites on trunks and limbs but the 

 distil bark slot on the end of a cut branch I no longer use. Instead 

 of tliat I cut off a limb near a small branch, paint the cut end of the 

 limbs and then jjut on anywhere from one to half a dozen grafts on 

 little branches belonging to this small branch. This allows us to use 

 the ordinary splice graft or cleft graft upon stocks of approximately 

 the same diameter as the grafts. This point will be appreciated by 

 everyone experienced in grafting. The nearer we can come to having 

 the diameter of the graft equal that of the stock the better our results 

 in getting catches. Topworking in this way means the use of a very 

 large number of grafts for any one tree. When our supply of grafting 

 wood is limited we may cut out simply part of the top of a tree suitable 

 for whatever number of grafts we have. Graft wood may be em- 

 ployed more economically now that we are using a method of covering 

 tl'.e graft entirely, buds and all with melted paraffin or other suitable 

 melted grafting wax. This method of covering each graft with a 

 waterproof coating avoids the desiccation or drying out of the graft 

 which in former years made it necessary to use grafts carrying a num- 

 ber of buds. At the present time by this new method we may use very 

 short grafts carrying only one bud if we wish for economy of material. 



I now give the audience a demonstration of topworking method 

 using a hickory limb about three inches in diameter which has been 

 cut off at a point leaving a small branch one-half inch in diameter. 

 This small branch has three little branches about the diameter of my 

 scions. The little branches are cut off at a point where the diameter 

 will correspond with the diameter of the scions which are now in- 

 serted by simple splice method or by simple cleft method. 



We have learned of late that it is very important to shade scions 

 after they Iiave been inserted. Some nurserymen have reported that 

 they obtained nearly one-hundred percent of catches where each graft 

 was protected from the sun with a slip of paper or a paper bag until 

 its sprout were well under way. When leaving a certain number of 

 other grafts unprotected from the sun experimentally, they did' not 

 get more than twenty percent of catches. This experimental work 



