above treatment seemed almost entirely to solve the difficulties of
transplanting and for about two years practically no hickories were
lost. Twenty-four Hales trees, 10 years from grafting brought here from
Monticello, Florida, all lived through the first year and 23 of them
through the second and now seemingly have a long life ahead of them.
Inasmuch as Mr. Jones expressed his doubts as to how successful this
experiment would be I regarded it as somewhat of a triumph. On the other
hand out of the finest looking lot of young Iowa hickories grafted a
year ago this spring and shipped in the fall and set out just as
carefully as I knew how, with well rotted stable manure in the holes and
seemingly having every prospect of a long life before them, all have
died now, excepting four, two of which I am making desperate efforts to
save.
The reason for this failure has not yet been proved, but I have an idea
what it is. With two exceptions the stocks were not large, unusually
small in fact, and the growth of the grafts was small, but, except for
their small size of stock and graft they were fine looking little
hickories as one often sees. The two that are in good condition today
were bitternuts on bitternut stocks and both the stocks and grafts were
notably larger than others. One of these bitternuts by the way, is
bearing this year. Evidently there was not as much vitality stored in
the smaller trees as in the larger ones. I am inclined to believe that
the real trouble was because the grafts, excepting the bitternuts, had
not become sufficiently established before having to stand the shock of
digging, shipping and transplanting. I have noticed in experiments made
to determine the adaptability of a number of species of hickory as
stocks that it was not unusual to find that a graft would do reasonably
well the first summer and die the second. If this happens occasionally
when hickories have not been transplanted it is undoubtedly very much
more likely to happen when they are transplanted. I have had practically
no losses in transplanting hickories when the graft had grown two
seasons before being transplanted. The safe plan, then, would seem to be
to let a graft grow two seasons before transplanting. Unfortunately
this will add to the cost of grafted hickories which even now are so
expensive to produce that almost no nurserymen grow them.
Another one of the commonly accepted principles that I do not now follow
is that of not
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