10 Sept., 1917.] Sj/riny Graftinrj of the Vine. 



555 



than a patchy vineyard iu which some vines have had to be grafted and 

 re-grafted several times. Such limping vines, as the French call them, 

 cannot become really strong; they die early, leaving gaps which it is 

 impossible to satisfactorily fill owini^' to the competition of their neigh- 

 bours. 



A very high percentage of faultless grafts is thus a sine qua non if 

 a field-grafted vineyard is to be a success. The Yema. or summer bud 

 graft, fully described in the January and February numbers of this 

 journal, greatly facilitates this desirable result. In the first place, the 

 percentage of success is invariably high, owing to the weather conditions 



in ieoniary, the best time for its e.\ecution, 

 being very constant. In the second, it gives 

 very perfect unions, and in the third, it is 

 easy to re-graft, the following spring, the 

 small percentage of vines which may have 

 failed to take, or have not formed jj^rfect 

 unions. 



It is the method by which these will be 

 re-grafted which forms the subject of the 

 present article, though it is obvious that 

 vines which for any reason were not Yema, 

 grafted last February, may also be grafted 

 in exactly a similar manner during the pre- 

 sent spring. 



The choice of the actual grafting method 

 depends on the condition of the stock; two 

 cases may present themselves. In the more 

 usual one stock and scion are of different 

 diameters, but they may also be of exactly 

 the same diameter. In the latter case, one 

 has the choice of several different graf s, of 

 which the whip-tongue is the most elegant 

 and generally satisfactory, but in the former 

 and more usual case, the simplest and most 

 practical graft is that known as cleft graft- 

 ing. 



Cleft Grafting. 



The ordinary cleft graft of the vine is 

 none other than which was usually eniployed 

 in former times to change the variety of a 

 block of vines, and to eliminate faulty iu- 

 uividual vines, which were the two main 

 objects of grafting in pre-phylloxera days. In such cases, there was 

 always a very considerable difference between the diameters of stock and 

 scion; much more so than when we have to field graft young resistant 

 vines of only one year's, or, at the niost, two years' plantation. Such 

 vines are necessarily of small diameter, and, iu the special case mentioned 

 above, they may even be of the same diameter as the scion. 



The actual method of executing this well-known graft is illustrated 

 in Fig. 1 , from which it will be seen that the operation is a very simple 

 one. The stock is cut off square: it is then split right across, and to a 

 depth which depends upon the thickness of the scion, which, after having 

 been trimmed to an elongated wedge, is forced into the cleft, as shown in 



Fig. 1.— Cleft Graft before 

 Binding — after Bioletti. 

 c, scion; cc, completed 

 graft 



