igorous or
less vigorous. For these two purposes, grafting is now in some grape
regions one of the most important vineyard operations.

In grafting the grape, there is a time and a way, not so particular as
many believe, but rather more particular than in grafting most other
fruits. If the essentials of grafting are kept in mind, one has
considerable choice of details. Grafting consists in detaching and
inserting one or several buds of a mother plant on another plant of
the same or a similar kind; the bud stock is the cion, the rooted
plant is the stock. The essentials may be set forth in three
statements: First, the prime essential is that the cambium layers, the
healing tissue lying between the bark and wood, meet in the cion and
stock; second, that method of grafting is best in which the cut
tissues heal most rapidly and most completely; third, the greater the
amount of cambium contact, as compared with the whole cut surface, the
more rapidly and completely the wounds will heal. Out of a great many,
the following are a few of the simplest methods in use in grafting the
grape, any one of which may be modified more or less as occasion
calls.

_Vineyard grafting in eastern America._

[Illustration: FIG. 8. Cutting off the trunk.]

In eastern America, the growing vine is usually grafted. At the New
York Agricultural Experiment Station, the operation is very
successfully performed on old vines as follows: Preparatory to
grafting, the earth is removed from around the stock to a depth of two
or three inches. The vines are then decapitated at the surface of the
ground and at right angles with the axis of the stock. If the grain is
straight, the cleft can be made by splitting with a chisel, but more
often it will have to be done with a thin-bladed saw through the
center of the stock for at least two inches. The cion is cut with two
buds, the wedge being started at the lower bud. The cleft in the stock
is then opened, and the cion inserted so that the cambium of stock and
cion are in intimate contact. If the stock is large, two cions are
used. The several operations in grafting are shown in Figs. 8, 9, 10
and 11. Grafting wax is unnecessary, in fact is often worse than
useless, and if the stock is large the graft is not even tied. Raffia
is used to tie the graft in young vines. It suffices to mound the
graft to the top of the cion with earth, for the purposes of
protection and to keep the graft moist. Two or three times d