This has some advantages in its application to fruit-trees. It will
enable the cultivator to raise more fruit on a small plat of ground, to
get fruit much earlier than from standard trees, and sometimes, with
high cultivation, the fruit will be larger. Dwarfing is done by grafting
into small slow-growing stocks. Almost all fruits have such kinds.
Grafting into other stocks, as the pear into the foreign quince, is a
very effectual method. The Paradise stock for the apple, the Canada and
other slow-growing stocks for the plum, the dwarf wild cherry of Europe
and the Mahaleb for cherries. Dwarfs produced by grafting upon other
stocks are short-lived, compared with standards of the same varieties.
They should only be used to economize room, to test varieties, and
produce fruit while standards are coming into bearing.
Better and much longer-lived dwarfs may be produced by frequent
transplanting, thorough trimming of the roots, and repeated heading-in.
The fruit on such dwarfs must be well thinned out when young, or it will
be smaller than is natural. The effect of heading in is to cause the sap
to mature an abundance of fruit-buds. This will tax the tree too much,
unless they be well thinned out. Root-pruning is an effectual method of
dwarfing (see Pruning). Dwarfing by root-pruning, repeated
transplanting, and thorough heading-in, will not render the trees very
short-lived, and in many situations it is profitable. The same is true
of the dwarf pear on the quince. All other dwarfing is more for the
amateur than the utilitarian.