MR. BERNATH: No, no, doesn't matter. This just happened to be an old melon box. I had started melons early in the spring.
Now, while the grafts are in the process of forming the unions, that is, when the cambium begins to form, you do not water until you take these out of the case. Add no more water, but make sure your pots are moist enough. For instance, in this one, there is plenty of moisture for the period of incubation.
MR. KINTZEL: How long? Couple of weeks?
MR. BERNATH: No. Sometimes they start to grow in three weeks, but generally four weeks, maybe a little over. Sometimes less; depends on everything.
MR. SHERMAN: What temperature in the greenhouse?
MR. BERNATH: Well, if you note in the springtime when the trees are beginning to grow, you know the night temperature goes down, while daytime may go up to 75, 80 in the spring. All right, you follow nature, and you'll never go wrong.
Now, the temperature, at night, if it does go down around the fifties, or even less, doesn't do any harm. That's the house temperature. But under the benches where you have your heat coils, that's of course, at least 60, maybe a little better, and, of course, in daytime it may—well, it's all right if it goes up to 70, 75. Then, of course, you have to ventilate through the house, and as a matter of fact, under the benches. Take a lot of bags and nail them along the walk to keep the heat under the benches. That gives you the bottom heat.
Now, as I understand, some of our members have tried this method, but they applied too much heat. They burned them. If they didn't burn them, fungus growth set in, because there's high humidity in that box. You will see the moisture condensation on the glass. Drops of water accumulate, and that's a thing you will have to guard against. So every morning give it at first about a 5-minute period when you take a dry cloth and wipe the surface moisture off the glass, the under side, to prevent the water from dripping on the unions here, to keep it dry. Then as you go along you can increase that period, but not over 15 minutes, until around the fourth week, you can generally put a stick under the glass to give more ventilation. When you see that the union is formed and everything is all right, take the glass off, take your grafts out and stand them up straight, and from there on you can water them, but not before.
And then you cut these stocks off right there as close as you can get it, sort of an upward movement, like that (demonstrating with knife).
MR. WEBER: It doesn't make any difference if you cut the rubber band that's on it or not?