BURBANK'S WAY WITH TREES 



remedied by making longitudinal slits with a knife 

 at intervals about the trunk, beginning each slit 

 as high as you can reach, and carrying it to the 

 very root of the tree. 



Mr. Burbank has always in his pocket a large 

 jackknife with which he can render timely aid to 

 any tree that seems to his keen eye to be suffering 

 from the tightness of its jacket. In the experi- 

 ment grounds at Sebastopol you may see many 

 trees that have been treated thus in the past, and 

 most effectively, as evidenced by the broad strips 

 of new bark, each spreading from the original 

 track of the knife blade, and now united by a 

 visible scar with the old bark which it so advan- 

 tageously supplements. 



You will do well to watch your trees of every 

 kind with the thought in mind that they may be 

 bark-bound, and you may give them relief and 

 greatly facilitate their growth with a few strokes 

 of your knife blade. 



Grafting and budding are of course processes 

 that require more skill. The details as to these 

 were given in the chapter on orchard fruits. I 

 would again remind the reader, however, that the 

 process of grafting may be applied with equal ad- 

 vantage to trees and shrubs of almost any species, 

 as well as to woody vines. You may, for example, 

 make over a climbing rose by grafting it with buds 

 taken from some thrifty vine. Or you may trans- 

 form an ill-shaped and weakly shrub into a sym- 

 metrical and vigorous one by grafting healthy 

 scions on its ill-nourished branches. 



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