256 PLANT PROPAGATION 



done as soon as the bark loosens in spring. It is essential 

 to speed and success that the bark lift readily from the 

 wood. Clear, dry weather also favors the work. 



340. Shield budding is by far the most important 

 method practiced in America. It is so called from the 

 form of the bark of the cion bud an elongated oval. In 

 popular parlance the bud with its surrounding bark as cut 

 is called the "bud" (Fig. 202). Essentially the operation 

 consists in inserting a bud cut from a twig of the desired 

 variety beneath the bark of a stock cut in the form of a 

 T or a cross and lifted gently to receive it. The bud is 

 then tied in place, but the binding cut in ten days or two 

 weeks, to prevent "strangulation" of the bud, which 

 pushes into growth when conditions are favorable. 

 Shortly after, the top of the stock is cut off, so all food 

 from the root will develop the budded top. 



In many respects the small details differ in the hands 

 of different budders ; for instance, height and length of 

 vertical cut, position of cross cut, cutting of bud and 

 method of tying. 



341. When stocks are budded. Peach and other stone 

 fruit seedlings, being of rapid growth, are usually large 

 enough in the North to bud a little after midsummer. 

 Apple and pear seedlings grow one year where the seeds 

 are sown. The following spring they are transplanted 

 to other nursery rows after the unavoidable shortening 

 of roots. All that grow large enough between June and 

 September are budded that season. The age of the stock 

 is then forgotten, because it is of no consequence in the 

 finished tree, whose age dates from the time when the 

 buds or cions grow. Thus peach budded this year in 

 the North in August starts to grow next spring, and by 

 the following November has become a "one-year" tree, 

 though 15 months have elapsed since the budding; but a 

 tree budded in the South in June of this year becomes a 

 "one-year" tree when only five months old in November 

 this vear. In each case the trees may be sold for fall or 



