Top-budding Trees
from Your Plants
The top-budding of fruit and ornamental trees is much practised
now-a-days by orchardists and fruit-growers generally, and sometimes
with marked success.
A famous horticulturist of Geneva, N. Y., some years ago planted a large
number of Lombard plum trees, which he fondly expected to see come into
bearing while quite young, and be early compensated for his labor and
expense in planting them. He waited a number of years without seeing his
hopes realized; his patience at last became exhausted, and starting, lie
top-budded them all with the Bradshaw plum, which grew rapidly, and bore
abundantly in a couple of years, and last season he received eight
dollars per bushel for the fruit in the Philadelphia market. It is a
well known fact among fruit-growers that some rank-growing varieties of
fruit trees, as for instance the Keiffer Hybrid Pear, do not produce
fruit so early, or in such abundance as some less thrifty-growing
varieties, such as the Beurre Clairgeau, but by top-budding the
latter-named sort on to a thrifty specimen of the former, we have a tree
that will bear fruit almost every year.
Nothing will take better from the bud than the rose; some elegant tree
roses can be grown by simply training up a shoot of any common or wild
rose to a sufficient hight, about five feet, and then top-budding it
with three or four choice hybrids, as the Gen. Jacqueminot, La
Reine, Coquette des Alps, and Black Prince, and those gems of the
floral kingdom, when in blossom, will form a variety of dazzling
beauties, the effect of which will not only be charming to the eye, but
novel as well. I once removed from the door-yard a large rose bush of
the Crimson Boursault variety, which had a number of large limbs on,
into a corner of the conservatory, and there budded into it fifty
different choice varieties of Roses of all classes: Hybrids, Teas,
Noisettes, Bourbons, China, and Bengal varieties. The effect of all
these different Roses, when in full blow the following summer was
amazing; a perfect galaxy of the "Queen of Flowers."
A similar operation is possible for any skillful amateur florist to
perform who has the facilities of a hot-house.
Budding can only be done when, ripe buds can be obtained, and when the
stock to be budded is in a growing and thrifty condition, so that when
opening the bark of the stock, the same peels freely, and opens readily
at the touch of the knife. We will append here a brief table showing at
what months of the summer different trees may be budded:
Apples July 10th to 12th.
Pears July 10th to 12th.
Plums July 10th to 12th.
Cherries July 20th to Aug. 1st.
Quinces July 20th to Aug. 1st.
Peaches July 20th to Aug. 1st.
Nectarines Aug. 10th to 20th.
Apricots Aug. 10th to 20th.
Most all sorts of ornamental trees, including Roses, in the ordinary
season; namely, from July to August 1st.
Next: Pruning
Previous: Budding
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