Established Fruit Trees 



Crown-grafting is the method employed, and there 

 are several variations of this. We practise what is 

 known as rind-grafting, and this is described and 

 illustrated in the chapter on PROPAGATION, Fig. 19. 

 I do not like cleft or wedge grafting, as the wounds 

 take a long time in healing, and the wet gets in, 

 causing rot later on. 



It is the layer of cells known as the cambium 

 which joins, and as this is just under the bark there 

 is really no necessity to cut into the wood when in- 

 serting the scions. 



Scions should be selected from a strong growing 

 variety ; young wood of last year's growth must be 

 used, and care should be taken to get these from 

 healthy trees. 



For re-grafting pears I prefer to have scions from 

 " Pitmaston Duchess/' and from " Bramley's Seed- 

 ling " for apples. 



Plums and " stone " fruit generally will not stand 

 the severe cutting back which is necessary for this 

 purpose, but I have seen cherries in Kent regrafted 

 much higher up, almost on the ends of the branches, 

 in fact. 



The actual grafting should be done about a fort- 

 night after cutting back the tree. The whole 

 operation is simple and easy to do. 



Mixtures consisting chiefly of clay are not of much 

 use to exclude the air from the wounds on big trees ; 

 grafting wax is better and small pots of this can be 

 obtained from any seedsman. I often use " Plasti- 

 cine," which is clean to handle and not much more 

 expensive than wax. 



Whatever the material used, it must be removed 

 when the young grafts have made a good start, and 



41 



