PROPAGATION OF APPLE TREES. 107 



Again, during heavy wind storms the budded trees are apt to be 

 broken off at the bud ; in fact, Nebraska nurserymen are obliged to 

 tie budded trees to stakes or wire to prevent their breaking during the 

 first season. 



Although we propagate apple trees under all three of the systems 

 mentioned, and have had years of experience in planting over 150 

 acres of orchard, we plant nothing but trees that have been raised 

 from piece-root grafts, because we consider them the best. 



We notice in some of our leading papers long articles on the effect 

 of stock on the cion and telling how we should select our stocks as 

 we select our cattle — by their blood. They seem to forget that there 

 is no blood in trees, in fact, nothing but water, and that nearly pure. 



All varieties are formed while the trees are in bloom by means of 

 pollen. Some parties claim that grafting a winter apple in a root of 

 summer variety will make the winter apple ripen too early in the 

 season, or, in other words, affect its keeping qualities ; in this they are 

 mistaken, unless it is a top graft and both varieties happen to bloom 

 at the same time and the blossoms of the winter variety are pollen- 

 ized by the earlier ripening sort. 



To show that the root of a tree does not affect the cion, you can 

 graft a thousand Ben Davis cions into a thousand seedlings with 

 perhaps no two of them alike, plant the trees so produced on the same 

 kind of soil and on the same slope where they are all exposed to sun 

 and wind alike, and when those trees bear, the fruit will all mature 

 at one time — a fact no practical orchardist will deny. 



Some nurserymen set up the claim that the reason they charge forty 

 cents for a budded tree or one grafted on a whole root and at the same 

 time offer a piece root for fifteen cents, is because the former cost more 

 than twice as much as the latter. 



It takes one year longer to put a budded tree on the market than it 

 does a grafted one, which would make it cost perhaps two cents more 

 than a grafted one ; a whole-root tree costs one- fourth of a cent more 

 than a piece-root tree — and as they cost a little more the question may 

 be asked, " Why do nurserymen grow budded and whole-root trees? " 

 Simply because the trees so treated grow faster in the nursery, and 

 those who grow trees on the poor lands of the east and south are 

 obliged to do so in order to compete with those who grow trees on 

 the rich lands of the west. 



