“A rubber plant may be layered or topped as it is called.  Rubber plants have an ugly habit of going to top, dropping off their lower leaves as they do this.  So they look as if they were trying to develop into huge bushes, and they become very ugly in so doing.  The top looks all right and many a person wishes that top were off all by itself and nicely potted.

“This is the way it is topped.  A slit is cut in the bark about where you would like to see roots growing.  Then soil and florists’ moss is bound about the wound.  These may easily be kept moist.  A paper pot could be put about the soil if one wished.  The soil mass should be a ball of about six inches in diameter.  When the new roots appear through the moss or poking out of the paper pot, cut the stem of the plant below the pot.  And behold you have a little rubber plant just as good as new, I have told this before to the girls.

“Another method of layering is to cut the parent off down to the ground.  What is left is called the stool.  This stool should be covered with about six inches of earth.  Let us suppose this is done in early spring.  When fall comes around uncover the stool.  There will be found a number of new shoots or plants all nicely protected.  These may be transplanted.  Do you know that stool can be used over again?

“This work of layering is really very simple.  Myron used it with his strawberries.  The runners were bent and buried just as those of the gooseberry I spoke of.  In this way new strawberry plants were obtained.  One shoot may be bent and buried more than once.  So one may get just as easily two or more new plants from one shoot.  This seems as much a miracle as the cross fertilization of plants.

“The fifth method is that of budding.  Apple, peach, plum, cherry and pear trees may be budded; so, too, may roses.

“In a word, a bud is taken from some desirable tree and inserted within the bark of a tree either less desirable or young.  Young fruit trees, as you know, need some help before they produce good fruit.  Now if George had at home a peach tree which bore very fine fruit he would be glad to cross a young tree with this.  Budding is a kind of crossing.

“This work should be done in the spring, although it may be done in the fall.  But the spring is a more limber time with Nature.  Sap is begining to flow; life is new and fresh again; all the plant world is ready to start up and do something.  Then, too, the bark of trees should be in as flexible a condition as possible.  The two things really necessary for the work are mature buds and bark easy to peel.

“Buds should be taken from the very strongest and best twigs of the last year’s growth.  The little seedlings in which the buds are to be inserted should be one year old.  These are called the stock.