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BUDDING ORANGE TREES. 



By W. Cradwick, Superintendent of Hope Garden 

 The Preparation of Large Sour Orange Trees for Budding. 



Large sour orange trees before they can be budded, must be cut down 

 to a height of three feet above the ground. They should be sawn level r 

 the cut made quite smooth and covered with a good coating of tar ; 

 ordinary coal tar mixed with an equal bulk of grease should be used, as 

 the mixture does not readily crack or peel off in the hot sun. 



The proper time to cut down the trees is when it is certain that the 

 seasons' rains, either in October or May, have set in : October for 

 preference, as the trees will then throw out young shoots readily ; on 

 these young shoots the sweet orange buds have to be placed. 



If the trees send out a large number of shoots, the shoots must be 

 reduced to six, selecting the six strongest nearest the top of the stump, 

 and at fairly equal distances from one another. These young shoots 

 must grow to be about as thick as one's finger or three quarters of 

 an inch thick at the base, before they are ready to be budded on ; if the 

 trees are cut down about the beginning of October, this will be about 

 February, which is also the best time for budding, as the buds then 

 start to grow in the fine weather, and the May seasons help them along 

 after they have commenced to grow. Persons anxious to start orange 

 cultivation with budded trees should take seeds from the sour trees and 

 raise seedlings at once, as these take two years from the time of sowing 

 the seeds to grow into plants fit to bud on ; these will eventually make 

 better trees than the old sour stocks. If the sour trees are injured or in 

 poor health from any cause, do not attempt to bud them. 



Condition of Trees from which the Sweet Orange Buds are to 



be taken. 



Sweet orange buds must be taken from young wood only. The proper 

 sized growths are those about as thick as a lead pencil. If the tree from 

 which it is desired to take buds have no young growths of this descrip- 

 tion, the tree should be cut back. If few buds are desired, then only 

 some of the branches need be cut, but if large quantities of buds are 

 required, the tree should be cut back all over. Cut back the branches 

 about a third of their length, but not more ; this will cause them to send 

 out the young shoots. Unless shoots on both sweet and sour trees are 

 in the condition described, the budding will not be successful. 



Budding is done as follows, as soon as the growth on both sweet 



AND SOUR ORANGE TREES ARE IN THE RIGHT CONDITION. 



Cut one of the young shoots from the sweet tree quite close to the 

 old wood, and then with a very sharp knife cut off a piece of the bark 

 and wood, about an inch and a quarter long, with the bud in the centre, 

 as shown in the illustration (Fig. 1) . If a leaf is growing with the bud, 

 cut it off leaving the stalk attached to the bark as shown in the illus- 

 tration (Fig. 1) : never break nor pull it off. 



The buds at the very bottom of the shoot on the round wood are the 

 best so long as there is the requisite length of bark attached, whether a 

 leaf is growing on the joint, or not, does not matter in the least. 



Make a horizontal cut about a third of the way round one of the shoots^ 



