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Posted on 2:18 PM by Wanto and filed under ,
By John Howard

For Stub grafting pieces of one-year-old healthy wood, about six buds long, are then prepared with the base cut into the shape of a wedge. The lateral branch to be grafted is then cut on its upper side, starting inch away from the main branch and extending to the base almost as far as the centre of the lateral shoot.

Generally speaking, double staking is advisable for standard trees, two strong stakes being driven in on either side of the tree about 18 inches apart.

In bridge-grafting the scions chosen must be longer than the part to be bridged. They should be pieces of healthy one-year-old wood, that is to say with oblique cuts made at either end of the graft. These sloping cuts should be longer than those made for other methods of grafting because they are to be thinner and somewhat wedge-shaped.

An upside down 'T'-shaped cut is then made in the healthy bark above the wound and a T-shaped cut made in the bark below the wound. The two ends of the grafts are then pushed into their respective T-shaped cuts with the buds the right way up. The cuts are then tightly wound round with raffia, and are painted over with grafting wax.

In the case of large trees three or four grafts may be used, each one being inserted firmly, tied in tightly and waxed over. Some growers, recently, have used a gimp pin (a kind of special short, thin nail) and have driven this through the overlapping bark into the wood of the graft and through the wood below.

Various methods of grafting are adopted by fruit growers but perhaps the two simplest are those known as Stub grafting and Side grafting. These plans allow the bulk of the branch to be left. All the maiden shoots and spurs, however, are removed as well as the top portion of each branch, to a spot where this is 2 inches in diameter. That is to say, you remove from the tree the bulk of the material, leaving a skeleton of branches forming a framework on to which the grafting can be done. In the case of Stub grafting the lateral branches varying from inch to 1 inch in diameter are retained wherever it is necessary to have a lateral branch of the new variety. In the case of Side grafting no lateral shoots are needed.

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