Dr. Morris: I have experimented with trees up to fifty years of age; but the most satisfactory work, perhaps, is done with trees that are not more than fifteen or twenty years of age and three or four or five inches in diameter. Those are the best trees to work with. If we cut off the limbs of a very old tree and try to top work it, it means an enormous amount of work on the part of the orchardist, more work than my employees like to give it. But one may topwork a tree of almost any age, preferably a tree less than twenty-five years of age; and by choice I should say trees not more than ten years of age. We have experts in the audience better qualified to speak on that subject than I am.
Question: Do you prefer the melted paraffin to the old-fashioned way of using bees wax?
Dr. Morris: The old-fashioned beeswax had a certain color, and the black wax with charcoal, with lampblack, both turned the light ray and allowed the heat ray to enter so that the amber of the old resin wax, and the black of the black wax both allowed damage to occur to the tree, in the South particularly, in a hot climate early in the summer, prevented our grafting in the summer because of the turning away of the light ray that was wanted and the absorption of the heat ray that was not wanted. The melted paraffin being perfectly transparent, allows the light ray to set the chlorophyl into activity. All the life processes of the tree are carried on under the influence of the green chlorophyl grains, and these work only in the presence of light.
Question: Can you successfully graft a pecan on the pignut?
Question: What is the best stock to graft pecan on?
Dr.Morris: Pecan stock, I think. I do not think we have anything better. Mr. Reed and Mr. Jones are both experts in that field. They have grafted hundreds of thousands of trees.
President Reed: I think the pecan is the best. The hickory will grow on the pecan very well, the shagbark hickory, but it will not do to change it with any degree of success.
Dr. Morris: The shagbarks will grow fairly well on pecans, but the pecan not well on the shagbark. It is best I think to put shagbarks on shagbark or shellbark. But they do well on pignut. I have got some very good shagbarks on mockernut. On bitternut they grow fast, but at the end of eight or ten years are inclined to slow up. Shagbark can be put on, I suppose, ten other kinds of hickory, but the pecan can not.
Question: How many grafts would be necessary on a nut tree twelve inches in diameter?
Dr. Morris: I should say you would probably have to put in fifty. I would cut off the branches down to about two inches or an inch and a half in diameter, and that might leave fifty stubs to graft. Graft all of them, is one way to do it. Having done one that way, you will then become familiar with the entire subject.