Mr. Jones: Don't have it too hot and it can't burn. You can tell that by the wax smoking.
President Reed: As long as the wax does not smoke, it is pretty safe.
Mr. Jones: This illustrates what we call a side graft. Put the scion in the side and leave the top on. You can also do it in bark grafting. Cut your bark, split it, and stick your scion straight down as it is here.
Voice: How do you apply the hot wax?
Mr. Jones: With a swab or brush. We use a carbon heater and that makes it about the right temperature.
Voice: How large black walnut trees could be top worked to English walnuts?
Mr. Jones: You can work almost any sized tree, but it is quite a job in the large tree. Take a tree larger than six inches in diameter, or eight, and it would not be very satisfactory. In cutting the scions be careful to make a straight surface on the cut bevel. To do that the knife should be held at an angle lengthwise to the scion. In our grafting in the South we leave the scion dry and cover it with a bag. That was in Florida.
Dr. Morris: That is a very interesting question about the limits of our using the method of covering the scion and all with the wax. I shall speak of that in my own grafting demonstration which is short. I got the point from Mr. Jones, and Mr. Jones tells me he got it from Mr. Riehl. They use black wax and hard, strong wax.
Mr. Jones: Mr. Riehl uses a liquid wax, resin and beeswax without the coloring matter. We use the coloring matter to toughen the wax.
Dr. Morris: Still, that is amber. Amber will cut out light, and it seems to me that it is a matter of a good deal of consequence, the black or amber wax covering the graft completely, buds and all, wound, scion, stock. It succeeds in the North, succeeds better than any other method in grafting, and yet in the South it does not succeed. It is possible that as you get further south the longer sun, the hotter sun scalds the cambium layer of bark beneath when it would not do so in the North. That is at least worth thinking about. In my own work during the past year I have used transparent paraffin alone, nothing else. I have tried different kinds of paraffin, the Parowax, the common one that the women put up preserves with is the one that will stay on best, will not crack and is perfectly transparent, allowing the light of the sun to act upon the chlorophyl, in the bark and the bud and intensify the activity of that part of the plant that depends upon light transformation by means of chlorophyl. I am very much interested to know if this will not succeed in the South. Paraffin would not attract the heat of the sun, and it is possible that this will allow us to carry the method of Mr. Jones, the best method to date, still farther south.