Apricot Propagation.



Can Royal apricots be grafted into seedling apricots? Do the scions do
well? What is the best time to graft them?

The apricot is grafted readily by the ordinary cleft grafting,
amputating above the forks if the tree is low-headed enough to allow you
to work into the limbs instead of the trunk. Grafts will take all right
in the trunk by bark grafting, but working in smaller limbs makes a
stronger tree. This is for old trees and the grafting is done during the
winter. Younger seedlings can be cleft or whip grafted in the stems, but
it is better to bud into the young seedlings with plump buds of the
current year's growth, in June, and by shortening in the seedling above
the buds as soon as they have taken, get a growth on the bud in the
latter half of the same growing season. In nursery practice, trees are
usually made by budding in July or August into seedlings which are then
growing from the seed planted the previous winter. Little seedlings from
under old trees may be carefully transplanted to nursery rows in the
spring and budded the same summer. Cultivated well and irrigated if
necessary, they will not suffer from this transplanting.



Renewing Old Apricots.



Shall I prune back heavily a 15 to 20-year-old apricot tree which did