6 TOP-WORKING SEEDLING PECAN TREES. 



pecans. Then followed a succession of trials with whip grafting, veneer 

 grafting, bark grafting, and chip budding, all with a varyingly large 

 percentage of failure and a uniformly small percentage of success. Some 

 propagators in the South report fairly successful results in the chip bud- 

 ding of pecans, but my results with this method were largely of a nega- 

 tive character. 



After persistent trials of all the known methods of budding and graft- 

 ing, through the varying conditions of four successive seasons, I have 

 narrowed the propagation of the pecan in North Carolina to one single 

 method, namely, patch budding. This method has, year after year, 

 given us the highest percentage of successful unions. The operation, 

 illustrated by figures 1 to 10, is as follows : 



1. HEADING BACK. 



During the dormant period, which is, roughly speaking, from Novem- 

 ber 1st to March 1st, the seedling trees are cut back to stubs, the ends 

 of which may be from 1 to 3 inches in diameter. Wounds larger than 

 this size take years to heal and endanger the life of the tree. Large 

 trees can be operated on as well as small seedlings, only one has to go 

 higher up so as not to cut too large limbs. Figure 1 shows a seedling 

 pecan tree 18 inches in diameter, which was stubbed back in the winter 

 of 1911-12 and successfully budded the following summer. The result 

 of this drastic heading back is a numerous growth of vigorous, rapidly 

 growing shoots near the ends of the stubs, by which nature endeavors to 

 heal over the wounds. The cambium in these vigorous, sappy shoots is 

 in the most active condition possible; just the condition most suitable 

 for the union of stock and cion. This optimum condition cannot be 

 secured except by the forced growth as the result of the heading back. 

 Our experiments, year after year, have shown that on the ordinary new 

 shoots, even on active young seedling trees, the percentage of living 

 buds was much less than on the forced shoots of the headed-back trees. 



The different steps in the operation of patch budding are briefly as 

 follows : 



First operation: Making parallel cuts on stock. See figure 2. 



Second operation: Making vertical cut to remove bark from stock. 

 See figure 3. 



Third operation: Loosening patch on stock. See figure 4. 



Fourth operation: Making parallel cuts on cion. See figure 5. 



