The important thing is to select good fresh active stuff, and particularly good sized scions and not small ones.
In budding we fit one side perfectly, and on the other side we leave a space of one sixteenth of an inch like a door. We didn't do that at first and we lost a good many buds because the active growth began on both sides. We had to leave a place there at the side, an expansion joint, to take care of that.
Mr. Storrs: Then you fit them at the top and bottom and at one side?
The Chairman: Yes, that's it.
The Secretary: This is one of the most important papers ever read before this Association, and that is because the success of nut growing anywhere is absolutely conditioned on our knowledge of propagation. If the propagation of nut trees were as easy as the propagation of apple and peach trees, we would probably now have in the north as many orchards of good nut trees as of apple and peach trees. Any one who has tried this budding of nut trees will, I am sure, appreciate the difficulties that Professor Hutt has described and the pains he has taken in telling us about them. This is the beginning of the demonstrations in propagating. They will be continued tomorrow; we will have then three or four of the most expert grafters and budders in the country, perhaps, who will give further demonstrations.
I would like to ask Professor Hutt a question. I noticed that in putting in some Persian walnut buds this summer, all died except a couple where the tops accidentally broke off.
The Chairman: That is explained by the illustration I gave of the wind blowing off all the shoots. Every one that was blown off lived even though some were badly torn. It was simply forcing the cambium at that point where it was needed. Mr. Roper had an experience of that kind.
W. N. ROPER
Vice-President Northern Nut Growers Association
Mr. Roper: We put buds on stock that was not very active, so the trees were cut back to six inches above the bud, forcing all the growth into the bud, and I suppose 95 per cent of those buds lived; on the trees not cut back the buds did not live.