CHAPTER V 

 BUDDING 



AND now the all-important time arrives the month of July. 

 The rose shows are just over and the skilled labour concentrated 

 on budding. The plants from which the buds are taken will be 

 sufficiently advanced, for having produced their first crop of 

 bloom there will be an abundance of solid, well-matured wood, 

 with plump buds, which must be taken before they become too 

 advanced. Sappy growth, with undeveloped buds, is unfit, and hard 

 wood with buds bursting into growth is also unfit. Experience 

 alone can teach the budder the exact stage when a bud has the best 

 chance, but perhaps we may offer a description of what constitutes 

 fitness. 



First, then, the wood must be firm, the leaf fully grown, the bud 

 (eye) plump and developed. Usually, the wood from which a fully 

 expanded bloom has been cut answers these conditions, and this 

 will furnish some guide as to what to look for in non-flowering 

 wood. There are, as a rule, and especially in some varieties, strong 

 growing shoots which, as they do not terminate in a flower, we have 

 called " non-flowering," and these give a supply of really good 

 buds as far up as the wood has hardened, which is often more than 

 half their length. We consider ourselves as fortunate when the 

 supply of this class of wood is ample. 



Immediately the buds are cut from the parent plant, the foliage 

 must be trimmed off, leaving the lower portion of the leaf stalk, 

 as far as the wings reach, as guards ; then, denuded of foliage, they 

 should be stood in shallow water or, far better, be wrapped in a 

 piece of wet sacking and kept out of the sun. If the foliage was 

 left on for some little time it would use up the sap contained in 

 the wood and materially damage the buds by sapping their strength. 

 The keeping of them in a damp covering, or in water, is most 

 essential where the budder gets off his supply in the morning, 

 as it may be several hours before he can use them all up, but the 

 ideal is to insert the buds within a few minutes of their removal 

 from the plants. To facilitate this the actual budder does not in 



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