22 NEW METHODS OF GRAFTING AND BUDDING. 



VOUZOU GRAFT. 



BY B. DROUHAULT, 

 Departmental Professor of Agriculture, Lot. 



The grafting of vines is such an important question, from 

 the point of view of the vitality and the durability of our 

 vineyards, that one cannot seek for too great perfection as 

 well as facility of execution. 



We know, as a matter of fact, that apart from the 

 question of affinity between stock on scion, it is the perfec- 

 tion of the joint which insures the longevity of the grafted 

 vine. A badly knitted graft may give vigorous shoots during 

 the first years, but soon after, when the non-adherent parts 

 develop, the plant becomes sickly and quickly dies. The 

 dying off of many grafted vines is generally attributed to 

 more or less defined phenomena, while it is simply due to 

 bad knitting. The English cleft graft and the whip-tongue, 

 which are almost alone used nowadays, possess the 

 peculiarity that many joints which at first seem good, are 

 incompletely knitted, and later on give sickly plants. The 

 favour with which the Salgues graft was welcomed by many 

 viticulturists showed how much we were impressed with the 

 defects of all the systems so far applied, and how urgent it 

 was to find a better method. Unfortunately, the Salgues 

 method, which consists of grafting a green bud on a green 

 shoot, excellent in theory, of easy execution, and upon 

 which great hopes were founded, has against it two great 

 causes of non-success which have limited its application. 



The choice of the point where the graft is to be made on 

 the green shoot is one of these causes, but by far the most 

 important is the choice of the scion-bud. For success to be 

 assured, it is necessary for this scion-bud to be in a peculiar 

 state of development difficult to characterize theoretically. 

 It is only after long experience and many failures that one 

 acquires exact notions of that state of development. Salgues, 

 it is true, tried to fix it by saying that the bud must be 

 " two-thirds green," that is to say, one-third of the wood 



* Revue de Viticulture, vol. IV., 1895. 



