d at a
temperature of around 32 degrees, and in wet moss. Later we found it
much better to keep scions at home in a cellar at a higher temperature,
and in only slightly dampened sphagnum moss.

In the beginning our efforts were mostly in grafting, then after a year
or two of failure, probably largely due to the way we kept our scions,
we had some results at the McCoy Nursery, with scions kept at home. The
McCoy Nursery was about four miles from my place, and located in a sandy
soil with a near quicksand sub-soil. At that location they were later
reasonably successful in grafting, using the modified cleft graft.

My nursery is in clay soil with a hard stratum of soil three or four
feet below the surface, and because of this I have been unable to graft
pecans in the nursery, though I have tried every known method, and under
all conditions. I could successfully graft at the McCoy Nursery, then
use the same scion wood and the same method at home, but have a complete
failure; therefore, I turned to budding entirely on pecans in the
nursery.

It is somewhat different with walnut--I can get fair results with
walnut grafting at times, though I do very little of this, as more than
95% of my walnut trees are produced by budding.

I do a lot of topworking on native seedling nut trees for others. Mr.
Sly, who is with me, and I make one or more of these trips each spring.
For this work I use only the slip-bark method, shaping the scion a
little differently from any other I have ever seen used. This has given
splendid results everywhere I have used it, which has been over the
territory from Ohio to Oklahoma.

A certain amount of allowance is made in this work as to safe drainage
of the stock, depending on weather and soil conditions, which vary as,
to season and location.

I do practically all of my nursery propagating by budding, and one of
the most essential things is to have favorable sap conditions in budwood
as well as in stocks.

On walnut I use only the current season's growth of wood for budwood,
and it must be reasonably well matured. Very often sap in the stock may
show signs of leaving before budwood is matured enough for use, and only
the riper buds near the base of the bud stick can be used, in which case
the rest of the buds on the bud stick are lost. Sometimes sap in the
stocks can be held a few days longer by cutting a ring around the stock
above the place where the bud is to be placed, which checks the flow o