Marcu, 1916 
AP isl 15; 
GCaAgheDeHeEN | SMeATGCA ZION E 85 
sert it under the bark of the tree you 
have and do not like. [This latter is 
done in June, and will be referred to in 
detail in THE GARDEN MAGAZINE for that 
month.—ED. | 
Limbs of about four inches in diam- 
eter are the biggest it is practicable to 
graft, and there is more certainty of 
growth, and better growth, when the 
grafted limbs are less than two inches 
in diameter, down to the size of a lead 
pencil. Grafting must be done early in 
the spring, just when the leaf buds be- 
gin to open. The time for grafting 
peach and plum trees will come a week 
or two earlier than the time for apple 
and pear trees. Have your equipment 
and materials ready to do the work 
when the trees have reached the proper 
spring development, and on a warm, 
sunny day. It makes no difference how 
old the trees are. 
Cleft grafting usually is the best 
method of grafting for top-working. 
This consists of sawing off a branch 
square where you want to insert the 
cions, splitting the end back four or 
five inches and until it opens wide 
enough to let in the cions, wedging 
open the split, and inserting the cions 
in the way to be described. If there is 
much of the work to do you will need a 
hatchet with a thin blade, a saw, a 
sharp knife, and some hickory wedges. 
For only one or two grafts you can get 
along with the knife and the saw. 
Two cions should be placed in each 
limb, one at each side of the split or 
cleft. If the limb is so big and stiff that 
it threatens to pinch the sap out of the 
cions, you should drive in the middle 
of the cleft (and leave permanently), a 
special wedge about as thick as the 
cions, to hold the wood apart. This 
wedge should allow the halves of the 
limb to grasp the cions lightly. But if 
the limb is small it will not pinch too 
hard. 
In grafting very small limbs the 
tongue method sometimes is good. The 
“tongue” is made by cutting both stock 
limb and cion off at a long slant, then 
half way down this slant splitting back 
both limb and cion, and cutting away 
half of each for another quarter inch. 
This leaves both cut surfaces so that 
they may be mortised together. With 
very large limbs you sometimes can slip 
a cion between the inner and the outer 
bark without any splitting of the wood. 
Any device which holds the cion in 
place is good. 
Beneath the brown bark of all fruit 
trees, next to the wood, is another layer 
of bark which is the business bark of 
the trees. The outer brown bark serves 
only as a protection. The inner bark is 
light green. The essence of successful 
grafting is to insert the cion (or bud) 
so that the inner green bark on the 
cion and the inner green bark on the 
stock limb line up with one another. It 
doesn’t matter about the wood, and it 
doesn’t matter about the outer bark. 
The brown bark on your cions will be 
less than a thirty-second of an inch 
thick while the brown bark on the limb 
may be almost a quarter of an inch 
thick. Make sure that the inner bark of 
the cion and the inner bark of the limb 
are in good contact, cover the openings 
and cut surfaces so as to exclude air 
and water, and the cions will be sure 
to grow. 
The protection required is got with 
grafting wax, which you can make your- 
self or buy from the seed store. The 
best kind for ordinary use is hard at 
ordinary temperatures, and must be 
heated and painted on with a brush. 
This hard wax will not melt and run off 
and leave the graft without protection 
when the hot sun strikes it. It is made 
of the following materials: Two pounds 
resin, one pound beeswax, one half 
pound tallow. Melt these materials to- 
gether, stir them well, and pour the mix- 
ture into a deep pan or kettle to keep 
until you are ready to melt it again for 
use. Be sure to get a good coating of 
wax over the sawed-off surface of the 
limbs and down the split sides. Also 
on the upper end of the cion, where it 
was cut off. The wax never needs to 
be removed. 
Wood for cions must be dormant. 
Planning the Vegetable Garden 
Returns from Minimum Space 
Horticulturist 
» Pennsylvania State College 
M. G. KAIN 
The proper time to get it is in the 
autumn, after the leaves fall and before 
the fall freeze-up comes, though it can 
be cut from the trees in the spring be- 
fore any sap starts to move if you fail 
to get it in the autumn. The nursery- 
men cut wood in the autumn and offer it 
for sale in the spring. Store the wood 
where it will neither freeze nor dry out. 
In a cellar, wrapped in damp cloths, is a 
good place, but a better way is to bury 
it in moist sand or sawdust in a box in 
the cellar. Green sawdust, right from 
the mill, with all its natural moisture, 
provides ideal storage. All wood for 
cions must be of the current season’s 
growth. Old growth will not do. For 
use, cut the wood into sticks three to 
five inches long and with two or three 
buds, one end square, the other end a 
long wedge to the centre, with the 
slopes uniform and even, and with one 
bud at the side near the top of the 
wedge. 
Plan the shape of each tree before 
you put on a single bud or graft. Place 
the cions or buds so they will grow at 
the right positions, and in the right di- 
rections, for future limbs. If you don’t 
do this wisely and well, the heads of 
your trees will be in the clouds, beyond 
reach for picking and pruning and 
spraying. With proper planning you 
can make a top-worked tree take a 
splendid shape. 
The trees to top-work are the seed- 
ling trees about your home, the old 
trees, the young trees that get broken 
off or that are untrue to name, the 
thrifty but inferior bearing trees. 
Sometimes wou can secure good results 
by top-working fine varieties which are 
subject to freezing or to diseases, on 
hardy, healthy trunks. Or you may 
want to try new varieties, or secure 
cross pollination. You can get blos- 
soms and fruit in three years from a 
bud or graft. Any fruit can be top- 
worked. Get the budding or grafting 
wood from bearing trees, from old trees 
if possible—from trees you have seen 
and eaten the fruit of, or from trees 
owned by reliable orchardists. 
tor Maximum 
[NoTte.—My garden is among the mountains of central Pennsylvania and is very subject to the vicissitudes of frosty 
springs and autumns. 
Strange as it may seem the season is practically the same as that west of Port Arthur, Ontario, the 
parallelism being due to a balancing of the altitude of my region against the latitude of the other, for though central Pennsyl- 
vania is in latitude 41 and Port Arthur nearly 50, the latter place is only about 600 feet above sea level, whereas my garden is 
more than 1,300 feet, and is surrounded by mountains from which cold air descends nightly in vast volumes, thus keeping the region 
cool in summer, shortening the season and jeopardizing tender crops at each end of the growing period. We have even had 
snow here in June! In 1915 early beans, corn, tomatoes, and other tender crops were killed by frost on the night of May 22d, 
and similar crops were frost nipped on the nights of September 22d and 23d.—M. G. K.] 
HAVE long found it a good practice 
to make a survey of the whole sea- 
son’s work in my garden about the 
time I take up the root crops for 
winter storage. This enables me to 
summarize the notes taken from day to 
day throughout the growing season and 
to relate the various features as well as 
tozlay the foundation for a better gar- 
den plan for the following year. Acting 
upon this belief I spent most of an 
afternoon in the garden in early Novem- 
ber criticizing my season’s work, then 
nearing its finish. Every detail and 
every crop was made to pass in review 
and give account of itself. When I say 
that the area thus scrutinized is only 50 
by 60 feet, or thereabout, it may seem 
