Mr. Brackett: What age do you commence the grafting?
Mr. Philips: I like to commence at two years old. I like to set a Virginia crab and let it grow one year and then commence top-working, and top-work about half the first year and the balance the second.
Mr. Brackett: Is that in the nursery row?
Mr. Philips: No, where I am going to have it grow. I have found the Virginia—and the Hibernal, too, either of them, very vigorous trees. The Virginia is very vigorous. You dig up a Virginia tree, and you find a great mass of roots; it has strength, and it grows fast. I have top-worked about forty varieties on the Virginia and some on Hibernal. Mr. Cady was there and looked it over, Prof. Green was there and Mr. Kellogg has been there a number of times—and I always ask them this question: If they found any trees where the top had outgrown the stock? I have never seen an instance where the top of the tree put onto a Virginia crab outgrew the Virginia. I have some in my garden now where the union is so perfect it takes a man with good eyesight to see where it is.
A. J. Philips, West Salem, Wis. Photo taken in his eighty-second year.
Mr. Brackett: If you had Virginia trees twelve years old would you top-work them?
Mr. Philips: Yes, sir, out towards the end of the limbs.
Mr. Brackett: Suppose the limbs were too big on the stock you are going to top-work, how would you do then?
Mr. Philips: I practice cutting off those larger limbs and letting young shoots grow. Mr. Dartt did a good deal of top-working, and he top-worked large limbs. I told him he was making an old fool of himself, but he wouldn't believe it. He would cut off limbs as large as three inches and put in four scions and at the end of two years they had only grown eight inches each. I have put in one scion in a Virginia limb that was about 3/4-inch in diameter, and had it that season grow eight feet and one inch. That is the best growth I ever had.