The Apple-Tree / The Open Country Books—No. 1

by L. H. Bailey

If the seeds of a Baldwin or Winesap apple are planted, we do not expect to get a Baldwin or Winesap; we shall probably raise a very inferior fruit. The apple has not been bred "true to seed" as has the cabbage and sweet pea. To get the tree "true to name," of the desired variety and with no chance of failure (barring accident), is one of the niceties of horticulture. This is accomplished with great precision and despatch.

The apple-tree is started from the seed. It cannot be grown freely by means of cuttings, as can the grape and currant. In commercial practice the seeds are collected mostly from cider mills or from pomace. The seeds may be washed from the pomace, allowed to dry, and then mixed in sand, charcoal, sawdust or other material to prevent dessication and kept until spring, when they are sown. Or, if the land is not so wet in winter that the seed will drown or be washed out, the seed in the pomace (not separated) may be sown in autumn. The seeds are sown in drills, after the manner of onions or turnips, one to two or even three inches deep. They germinate readily in the cool of spring, and the plants should reach a height of twelve inches and more the first year.

If these plants were grown directly into bearing trees, it is probable that no two trees would produce the same kind of fruit. Some of the fruit might be summer apples, some of it winter apples, some red, yellow or striped, some of it flat, oblong or spherical, most of it sour but perhaps some of it sweet. Probably every kind would be inferior to the parent stock or to standard varieties, although there is a fair chance that a superior kind might originate from a field of such plants.

Therefore, it is not the variety (that is, the top) that is wanted in the raising of these numerous plants, but merely the roots, on which desired varieties may be grown by the clever art of graftage. Yet not even all the roots may be wanted, for the growing plants may differ or vary in their stature and vigor as well as in their fruit. The discriminating grower, therefore, discards the weak and puny treelings at the digging time; or if the weak plants seem still to have promise, they may be allowed to grow another year before they are dug for the grafting.

This digging time is the autumn of the first year, when the plants have grown one season. They are then to be used as "stocks" on which to graft Baldwin, Winesap or other varieties. The growing of these apple stocks is a business by itself. Formerly, most of the stocks used in North America were imported from France, where special skill has been developed in the growing of them and where the requisite labor is available. But now the stocks are grown also in deep rich bottom lands of the Middle West, as in Kansas, where, in the long seasons, a large growth may be attained.

The methods of graftage of the commercial apple-tree are two—by cion-grafting whereby a bit of wood with two or three buds is inserted on the stock, by bud-grafting (budding) whereby a single bud with a bit of bark attached is inserted under the bark of the stock.

Cion-grafting is practiced in winter under cover. The stock is cut off at the crown and the cion spliced on it, or the root may be cut in two or more pieces and each piece receive a cion. The union is made by the whip-graft method (Fig. [16]). The cion is tied securely, to keep it in place. The piece-root method is allowable only when the root is long and strong, so that a well-rooted plant results the first year. The cion is a cutting of the last year's growth (as of No. 1, in Fig. [14]). However accomplished, the process is to supply the cion with roots; it is planted in another plant instead of in the ground.

16. The whip-graft before tying.