No. 8. 



Grafling and Budding. 



257 



GRAFTING AND BUDDING. 



From Afflecli's Far. and Gard. Almanac. 



Althovgh it is generally belter for a farm- 

 er to go to a nursery, and there select the 

 young trees he may require, yet every one 

 oujrht to have a knowledge of grafling and 

 budding — with this view a sketch descriptive 

 of the process has been prepared, and is here 

 oifered. 



Stocks for grafling or budding are produced 

 either by sowing seed, or from layers, suckers 

 or cuttings; but* the stock must be of the 

 same natural family as that to which the 

 graft belongs, or have a close affinity to it. 

 To use others — as the sycamore for the pear 

 and apple, the walnut for the peach, &c. — 

 may do as a matter of amusement or experi- 

 ment, but can be of no permanent and real 

 advantage. In grafting, mere propagation 

 should not be the only object, for to secure a 

 permanent union between the stock and graft 

 is of far more importance. For apples, seed- 

 lings of the apple and the crab. Pears, those 

 of the wild species or of the quince. Plums, 

 seedlings of the common or wild plum. Ciier- 

 ries, seedlings of any free-growing wild va- 

 riety. Peaches, on the stock raised from 

 eecd. The apricot and nectarine, the larger 

 sort of plums. The season for grafting may 

 begin by the middle of March, and continue 

 until the end of April ; the grafts being cut 

 into lengths of four or five buds each; the 

 knife to be thin, small and keen-edged. Cut 

 oti'lhe head of the stock and the base of the 

 scion at a corresponding^ angle, so as to form, 

 wlien put tngrether, a neat splice: the tip of 

 thp stock, if larger than the graft, is to be cut 

 off horizontally. Next a slit is made down- 

 wards in the centre of the sloping cut in the 

 stock A, and a corresponding slit upwards in 

 the face of the scion B ; in applying the scion 

 to the stock, the tongue formed in the base 

 of the former is inserted into the cleft of the 

 latter, and so fitted that the inner bark may 

 unite neatly and exactly on one side ; the 

 splice is then tied and covered with clay or 

 waxed bandage. Other methods might be 



mentioned, but it will suffice for our purpose 

 to include cleft and root grafling ; the former 

 being adopted where the stock is much larger 

 than the graft, when the head of the stock is 

 cut off, and a perpendicular slit made, D, the 

 scion being sloped on both sides, C, E, and 

 inserted like a wedge into the cleft of the 

 stock. Root-grafting is performed on a root 

 a little thicker than the ^raft, and the more 

 fibrous the better ; a quantity of them may be 

 procured in the fall, and packed away in sand 

 or earth in a cellar, those from young trees 

 being most desirable ; the plan represented 

 at A, B, will answer best, and when grafted 

 they may be packed away in earth in the 

 cellar until the spring, when they may be 

 planted out in nursery rows. 



Budding. This mode of propagation is ap- 

 plicable not only to fruit-trees but to orna- 

 i mental trees and shrubs, including the rose, 

 and there are some fruits that can scarcely 

 be multiplied in any other way. It consists 

 in removing a bud with a portion of the bark 

 from a tree, and insertingr it in a slit of the 

 bark of another tree. The season for per- 

 forming this operation is in July or August, 

 when the buds destined for the following 

 year are completely formed in the axils of the 

 leaves, and when the portion of bark parts 

 freely from the wood beneath ; the buds to be 

 preferred being those on the middle of the 

 shoot. There are many forms of budding; 

 but that which is the simplest and most easi- 

 ly performed need alone to be described. 

 The operator should be provided with a bud- 

 dinuf-knife in which the cutting ed^e of the 

 blade is rounded off at the point, and having 

 a thin ivory or bone handle, like a paper 

 folder, for raising the bark of the stock. A 

 horizontal or transverse incision is made in 

 the bark, quite down to the wood, and from 

 this incision a perpendicular slit is drawn 

 downwards to the extent of perhaps an inch. 

 The slit has now the resemblance of the let- 

 ter T, see F; a bud is then cut from the tree 



