MR. BECKERT: Are the hickory stocks potted before you graft, or are you grafting bare roots?
MR. BERNATH: Hickory and oaks are bare rooted. They are too long to pot.
MR. SHESSLER: How many years are lost in this method of bench grafting compared with field grafting trees in the nursery row?
MR. BERNATH: Quite a few. The gentleman is right, if you graft outside where the tree remains, you get a big growth on it.
MR. SHESSLER: In other words, a tree grafted out in the field will have nuts on it three years sooner?
MR. BERNATH: Yes if you leave it where it is. But if you transplant it, look out for a large tree. It is likely to fail.
Bench grafted trees transplant easily. The roots are limited and little of the root system is destroyed.
MR. WILKINSON: I have been propagating for about 39 years, and I have grafted thousands of pecan trees in my nursery, and I have only a few trees growing from grafts. Budding is much more successful with me. Several times I have had up to a 90 per cent stand by budding.
MR. GERARDI: I have tried bench grafting but it sets you back three years in the nursery to get a tree of equal size compared to grafting in the nursery row. If you want a small tree, it's all right. And then again, it's your help situation. If you have got to set them out, they handle the grafts like brush, and I don't like that. Hickory is not hard to graft in the field. I think if you set 10 you get 9 to grow. For scions I go back on two-year wood and oftentimes on three-year wood where there are buds. I don't have trouble at all. With pecans, you have a little more difficulty, because the wood is more pithy inside and doesn't grow so well.
MR. BERNATH: With any tree, I don't care what it is, give me one-year growth, this year's growth, and I am going to have wonderful success. When you take the old wood you have to be sure that you have buds.