The Chairman: You try to keep an equilibrium by cutting down the top in proportion?
Mr. Rush: Yes, sir.
Mr. Pomeroy: In examining transplanted trees I found ten times as many roots where the tap-root had been cut; and there were two tap-roots. I like a tree with a good tap-root system and I am positive that if you transplant a tree you get a better root system, get a great many more roots.
The Chairman: The tree development, it seems to me, depends not upon the number of roots which are carried with it when it is transplanted, but upon the feeding roots which develop. Now, if we cut back the tap-root, cut back the laterals, cut back the top, we have a tree carrying in its cambium layer, food, just as a turnip or beet would carry it—and I look upon a transplanted tree much as a carrot or beet, with stored food ready to make a new root.
Mr. Harris: I planted last fall a year ago a lot of English walnuts. Would the gentleman advise taking those up, cutting the tap-roots and planting them again?
Mr. Rush: I don't think that would be advisable.
Mr. Harris: They were grown from the nuts sown in a row last fall a year ago and grew very well.
Mr. Rush: In propagating the English walnut we have had them do the best by transplanting when the tree is about two years old, but it will more or less disturb the vigor of a tree to transplant it. That is self-evident; it needs some time to heal those wounds that are made both in the root and the branch.
Mr. Harris: What time of year do you bud them?
Mr. Rush: In August.