CHAPTER XLII. 



THE RAISING OF NEW VARIETIES OF FRUIT TREES, AND 

 EXPERIMENTS IN DOUBLE GRAFTING. 



By William Crump, V.M.H. 

 For many j-ears head gardener to Earl Beauchamp at Madresfield Court, Malvern, Worcestershire. 



This is a most fascinating pursuit to an 

 enthusiast with the necessary leisure at 

 command, but often times, life, and other 

 circumstances prevent the realisation of 

 all the possibilities that seem within 

 reach. It was during my early appren- 

 ticeship, upwards of 60 years ago, that 

 my first experiments began, and many a 

 hedgerow plant was operated upon in my 

 spare time, by budding, grafting, and 

 inarching, but it was not until about 36 

 years ago that the real opportunity pre- 

 sented to carry out experiments on pro- 

 per lines, when it became part of my duty 

 to raise some two thousand apple, pear, 

 plum, and cherry trees for annual dis- 

 tribution to the farm and cottage tenantry 

 on the Madresfield Court Estate. The 

 details of fertilisation are so well known 

 as to need no comment, for every ore 

 who attempts it has his own particular 

 fancies as to cross fertilisation, and the 

 sowing and treatment of the seedlings. 



Having got the seedlings, it is always a 

 matter of urgency to fruit them as early 

 as possible, and we have proved to our 

 own satisfaction that the small-leaved 

 French Paradise stock gives precocity, 

 and early fruiting wood, either budded 

 or grafted, whichever is most convenient. 

 This stock, however, does not give a long- 

 lived tree afterwards. 



The stocks we prefer for general pur- 

 poses are those known as free crab seed- 

 lings, raised from well-ripened pippins of 

 high-coloured fruit, such as the best cider 

 is made from, sown thinly as soon as 

 obtainable in rows outdoors and kept safe 

 from mice, birds, and other vermin. The 

 first and natural inclination of these seed- 

 lings is to strike downwards with a tap 



root. The seedlings should be carefully 

 lifted at the fall of the leaf, during the first 

 or second season, according to growth 

 made. The tap root is preserved intact 

 and replanted full length, but in a hori- 

 zontal position near to the surface in a pre- 

 pared trench. The tap root at this stage 

 is young and pliable. Thus bedded 

 early in the season, future growth will 

 scarcely be interfered with, and im 

 abundance of healthy fibrous roots will 

 form throughout the entire length of the 

 original tap root, thus securing the most 

 desirable foundation for a future tree, 

 The stock is the fundamental part of a 

 good tree as upon this depends its long- 

 evity, fruitfulness and future prosperity. 

 It is equally certain that a stock without 

 fibrous roots cannot produce a fruitful 

 tree, hence the careful preparation of the 

 stock before working, in order to obtain 

 fibrous roots, which is of the greatest 

 importance and necessity. This is best 

 obtained by a second transplanting into 

 permanent position, ready for budding in 

 the following August. We have had 

 these prepared stocks send up a 

 shoot 5 to 7 feet in length the first 

 year from dormant bud; moreover, there 

 is no root pruning ever necessary. We have 

 repeatedly tried other methods of raising 

 stocks, but none equal to the above 

 method. We have found the operations of 

 nature and the influence of stocks and 

 scions very subtle and uncertain. Experi- 

 ments have been tried to improve the 

 flavour, size, colour, habit, good-bearing, 

 or long-keeping qualities, all of them, or 

 some of them combined. Prepared stocks 

 have been budded at the ground with 

 Blenheim Pippin as the medium, then 



