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 not mature its fruit this season, I think on account of neglect?  It was very poorly cultivated and not irrigated, consequently looks very sick.

Cut back all the main branches to six or eight feet from the ground, leaving on whatever small growth there may be below that height.  Paint the stubs and thin out the shoots next summer to get the right number of new branches properly distributed.  Whether you will get a good renewal of the head depends upon whether the sickness is in the root or not.  Cut back just before the buds swell toward the end of the dormant season.

Summer Pruning of Apricots.

Is it feasible to prune five-year-old apricot trees in August?  They seem in good growth and have been irrigated three times this season, though they have never been pruned very closely.

Summer pruning would be perfectly proper and advisable.  Summer pruning immediately after the fruit is picked, has become much more general, and winter pruning has proportionately decreased.  Young trees are winter pruned to promote low branching and short, stout limbs; bearing trees are summer pruned to promote fruit bearing and check wood growth — the excess of bearing shoots being removed by thinning during the winter.

Wild Cherries.

Where do the Mahaleb and Mazzard cherries grow naturally?  How large are the trees, and what kind of fruit do they bear?

The Mazzards, of which there are many, and some of them wild in the Eastern States, are counted inferior seedlings of the species avium, and are tall, large trees, the fruit being small and rather acrid and colors various.  The Mahaleb is a European type with a smaller tree, fruit inferior to the Mazzards, and used as a root under soil and climatic conditions under which the Mazzard is not hardy and vigorous.  Neither of the kinds are worth considering for their fruit.