Edwardsville Spectator

FROM THE DELAWARE GAZETTE,

An easy method of propagating Fruit Trees.

Let your graft, which I shall call the mother graft, be put in a stock as thick as a man's thumb, and inserted in the usual manner, and as near the earth as convenient. The first year, if your graft take kindly to the stock, it will grow several feet; the second year it will grow to a good size for transplanting, and in the spring following, before the sap begins to run, take up the stock and graft, and replant it, say 9 inches deeper than the juncture of the graft with the stock. The graft will soon take to growing, and will be fit (in the course of a year or two) for transplanting again, first having sawed off the graft from the stock, the graft having by this time a sufficient number of roots to support itself. Upon the future tree, the life solely depends for success; but of this there cannot be a doubt, if the mode here prescribed be pursued. The pear, quince, cherry, and plum, are great scion yielders; and I believe the apple, our most generally useful fruit, might be made to produce in the same way, if the ground around were dug every three or four years. By this mode hundreds and thousands of the most valuable kinds of fruit might be raised, and with the least possible trouble; for while the mother graft lives, all of its descendants would be of the improved kind. I have often wished the delightful pear tree of my garden, had been served in this manner. It now puts out hundreds of scions, all of which, if this mode had been adopted, could be planted as bearers, without any thing more being necessary.