CUTTING AND KEEPING GRAFTS.
Many experienced orchardists suppose the best time for cutting grafts to be immediately on the fall of the leaf in autumn.
Grafts should be cut in mild weather, when the wood is entirely free from frost. Select the outside limbs and the last year’s growth of wood.
Too much care cannot be observed in keeping the varieties separate. Tie up in bundles and mark the names of each kind as soon as cut. A moment’s carefulness may save years of vexation.
When the grafts are to be used at home, it is well to lay them in the cellar where frost will not reach them, and slightly cover them, so that they shall not evaporate the moisture which they contain. Too much wet injures them. Half-dry sand is as good as anything, and if packed in an old nail-keg and put in a cool place, they will require no further attention until it is time to use them.
When grafts are to be sent to a considerable distance, they should be carefully wrapped in moist cloth, with folds enough to exclude the air entirely. For convenience of carrying they may be packed, in this condition, in a box, and the space filled in with cotton-wool, chaff, bran, or any similar substance.
It is stated by some, that grafts taken from the lower limbs of trees will produce fruit the soonest; while those from the middle and top and from the upright shoots will make trees of the finest form. We confess a slight prejudice against the lower limbs of trees, as it was thence that “switches” were cut in the mischievous days of our youth, wherewith to apply Solomon’s doctrine of discipline. Whether they will make upright trees, we cannot say; but they are supposed to have a tendency to make upright men.