The Nut Culturist: A Treatise on Propogation, Planting, and Cultivation of Nut Bearing Trees and Shrubs Adapted to the Climate of the United StatesFuller, Andrew S. (Andrew Samuel)
Science
The Nut Culturist: A Treatise on Propogation, Planting, and Cultivation of Nut Bearing Trees and Shrubs Adapted to the Climate of the United States
Fuller, Andrew S. (Andrew Samuel)
Nuts
=Budding Chestnuts.=--I have frequently tried budding chestnut
stocks as described for the almond, and extensively employed with
other kinds of fruit trees. But the results of my experiments have
been unsatisfactory, although buds were set from very early in
summer until late in the fall, also on young and old wood; but so
few have taken and remained alive over winter that my personal
experience in this mode of propagation will not justify its
recommendation to others. Perhaps there is some secret connected
with the operation that I have not yet discovered, but which is
known to other propagators. Of course, budding with semi-dormant
wood and buds in spring, as soon as the bark will peel from the
wood, is practicable, but there is really nothing to be gained by
this mode of propagation over that of grafting.
=Transplanting and Pruning.=--There is no tree that will bear or
withstand more severe pruning than the chestnut. If trees of one or
five hundred years of age are cut down, the stumps are sure to throw
up an immense number of sprouts from adventitious buds, as these are
readily produced at almost any point on the sapwood or alburnum
under the bark; and yet, with this inherent vitality and faculty of
recuperation, the chestnut tree does not naturally, like many other
deciduous kinds, throw up suckers from the roots. Keeping this
peculiarity in mind, the cultivator has only to use his pruning
knife freely upon the trees to secure almost any form desired. But
after the trees have become well established, very little pruning
will be required, except to occasionally thin out or remove a
rambling branch, to secure a well-balanced and shapely head to the
tree.
In transplanting from the nursery rows, after grafting, and
especially if the trees are of some considerable size and large
enough to set where they are to remain permanently, there is sure to
be a loss of roots, and those that are preserved are likely to
remain for a short time inactive and incapable of absorbing
nutrients from the soil to which they are transferred, or until new
rootlets are produced. Under these conditions we aim to favor the
roots by removing or cutting back the greater part of the branches.
No matter how carefully such trees are lifted and their roots
protected during the operation of transplanting, it will check the
growth, and the best and most practical restorative is severe
pruning of the top, and every young shoot of the previous season's
growth should be cut back to within three or four inches of its
base. I am presuming that the trees have been grafted only one year,
but if older, and the cions were set high enough to begin the
formation of the head of the tree, then the entire young growth may
be cut away and some of the older wood, but of course not below the
graft. All broken roots must be cut off; and the ends of the larger
ones, roughly severed with the spade or other implements employed in
digging, should have their wounds smoothed with a sharp knife.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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