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168 MINNESOTA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY: 
I am not especially advocating top-grafting. I think it is a fine thing to 
top-graft where we want to change the variety; it is a matter of necessity; 
but aside from that I do not believe there is any necessity or advantage in 
top-grafting. We can just as well grow a stock hardy enough to stand as to 
top-graft. Obstructing the sap is the reason why a top-grafted tree bears 
quicker than a tree when not grafted. It is exactly the same principle as 
girdling, but it is a great deal more expensive to do it. When you can 
girdle five trees a minute with my tree girdler, and it takes half an hour to’ 
top-grafts you soon use up the profits. ( 
Mr. Philips, (Wis.): It is a mistaken idea that when the graft is high. 
from the ground it is less likely to kill. My Virginia that I spoke of yester- 
day were grafted closer to the ground than I graft now, and those Wealthy 
right beside them were two feet higher than the Virginia. If it does not in- 
crease the hardiness with us it keeps those trees bearing. I have been look- 
ing over his premises, and [ did not see a good top-worked tree on his 
place. If he had listened years ago to the instruction at our place, if he had 
paid attention, situated as he was, to what was told him, he would have 
been all right, but as far as top-working is concerned he does not know the 
first principles. (Laughter.) That is pretty plain talk, but it is the truth. 
You go to his place, and you will find limbs cut off and grafts put in two 
and a half inches in diameter. I did not see any less than two inches in 
diameter, and there is scarcely a good union in the whole outfit. Scions 
must be on the smaller limbs so they can heal over and not on large limbs 
where they cannot heal over. I asked Prof. Green why it was that a graft 
on a smaller limb made a better union and grew three or four feet a year 
more than it did if put on a larger limb. He said it was because it heals 
over quicker and better. 
Prof. Hansen, (S. D.): We attempt in grafting to make a union of the 
cambium layer between the bark and the wood. We are always particular 
to get the inner barks, or cambium layers, together. If the grafts are of the 
same size you get a union that is good and grows quickly, whereas if you 
can only put the graft in on one side it will not heal so quickly; or you can 
put one in on each side or even three or four to help heal over in large limb, 
and then afterwards cut them off to one and in that way heal them over 
more quickly. If they are not of one size they do not heal over very readily. 
It will do in a moist climate but not in ours. 
So far as top-grafting is concerned, all those problems can be reduced to 
a very simple principle, the sap that goes up in the spring is worked over 
in the leaves, and this sap comes down in the cambium layer. If there is an 
obstruction in the way, as for instance a ring of bark is taken away around 
the tree, as in girdling, so that the sap is kept back partially, that sap has to 
go somewhere, and it has the tendency to change the wood buds into 
blossom buds and causes earlier bearing. If you do not want to girdle then 
you can top-work it on a stock that is slightly uncongenial, as in the case 
of the Malinda on the Virginia crab, where the union is not quite congenial 
and the wood buds change into blossom buds. If you want to put it on 
dwarfer stock, like the Siberian crab root, which I think would make about 
a three-quarter full sized tree, as near as I can judge at present, there is a 
difference in the structure of the wood, and it has the same tendency as 
girdling; it keeps the sap in the top and causes early bearing. If you do not 
want to do that, simply want to force the tree into bearing, you can simply 
