and let your clay be
tender, to yeeld easily; and all, lest you moue your graffes. Some vse
to couer the clift of the Stocke, vnder the clay with a piece of barke
or leafe, some with a sear-cloth of waxe and butter, which as they be
not much needfull, so they hurt not, vnlesse that by being busie about
them, you moue your graffes from their places. They vse also mosse tyed
on aboue the clay with some bryer, wicker, or other bands. These profit
nothing. They all put the graffes in danger, with pulling and thrusting:
for I hold this generall rule in graffing and planting: if your stocke
and graffes take, and thriue (for some will take and not thriue, being
tainted by some meanes in the planting or graffing) they will (without
doubt) recouer their wounds safely and shortly.

{SN: Time of graffing.}
The best time of graffing from the time of remouing your stocke is the
next Spring, for that saues a second wound, and a second repulse of sap,
if your stocke be of sufficient bignesse to take a graffe from as big as
your thumbe, to as big as an arme of a man. You may graffe lesse (which
I like) and bigger, which I like not so well. The best time of the yeere
is in the last part of _February_, or in _March_, or beginning of
_Aprill_, when the Sunne with his heat begins to make the sap stirre
more rankely, about the change of Moone before you see any great
apparancy of leafe or flowers but onely knots and buds, and before they
be proud, though it be sooner. Cheries, Peares, Apricocks, Quinces, and
Plummes would be gathered and grafted sooner.

{SN: Gathering graffes.}
{SN: Graffes of old trees.}
The graffes may be gathered sooner in _February_, or any time within a
moneth, or two before you graffe or vpon the same day (which I commend)
If you get them any time before, for I haue knowne graffes gathered in
_December_, and doe well, take heed of drought. I haue my selfe taken a
burknot of a tree, & the same day when he was laid in the earth about
mid _February_, gathered grafts and put in him, and one of those graffes
bore the third yeere after, and the fourth plentifully. Graffes of old
trees would be gathered sooner then of young trees, for they sooner
breake and bud. If you keepe graffes in the earth, moisture with the
heat of the Sun will make them sprout as fast, as if they were growing
on the tree. And therefore seeing keeping is dangerous, the surest way
(as I iudge) is to take them within a weeke of the time of your
gra