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Placed in sand in a cool cellar so they will not shrivel, they are kept until grafting time, which is early spring, usually before the leaves start on the stock. The cions may be placed on the tree by several methods, but only two are commonly employed, the whip-graft and the cleft-graft. The requirement is to cause the cion and stock to grow together solidly, making one piece of wood.
In young trees set for the purpose of top-working, the trunk may be cut off at the desired height and two cions inserted. The entire top is then removed at once; this is allowable only on young trees. Probably the better practice is to graft the main small side limbs and the main trunk or leader higher up.
A person has a right to gratify his legitimate tastes. If he wants twenty or forty kinds of apples for his personal use, running from Early Harvest to Roxbury Russet, he should be accorded the privilege. Some place should be provided where he may obtain trees or cions. There is merit in variety itself. It provides more points of contact with life, and leads away from uniformity and monotony.
It is better for him to purchase regular nursery trees and to graft the cions on them; or he may put the cions in any older tree that is available. I have spoken of my own collecting of certain dessert apples. I "worked" them on young Northern Spy trees, purchased when two or three years old; they were grafted after they had stood a year in the orchard.
Usually a girdle heals itself if the injury does not extend into the wood, and if it is bound up to prevent drying out; but when the injury is deep and the exposed wood has become dry and hard, the cions may be used. The cions are somewhat longer than the width of the girdle.
The trunk or branch is cut off; two cions are inserted in a cleft made with a knife. Cleft-grafting is the usual method for the orchardist. In either kind of grafting, the cion carries about three leaf-buds. One bud may not grow, or the young shoot may be injured. The lowest bud is usually most likely to grow; it pushes through the wax.
If I procure cuttings of a good apple, what shall I do with them that they may give me of their fruitage? The cuttings will probably be dormant twigs of the last season's growth. They may not be expected to grow when placed in the ground. They are therefore planted in another tree, becoming cions.
In some cases, new wood is added in the form of cions of last year's twigs. Such cions may be set around the edge of a stub, thrust between the bark and the wood, to start new branches where an important one was broken off. The operation is performed in spring. Sometimes cions are used to bridge a girdle.
If the amateur now wants to grow these varieties, he must find cions as best he can by patient correspondence, and graft them on his own trees. When I planted an orchard twenty-five years ago, I found cions of Jefferis here, of Dyer there, of Mother, Swaar and Chenango in other places.
The little cions I grafted into the tree were soon lost in the overgrowth, and yet all the branches that came from them carried the genius of one single variety and of none other. And I often speculated whether there were any reflex action of these many varieties on the root, demanding a certain kind of service from it.
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