The seedling will be ready for budding or grafting when it has grown to 24 to 30 inches tall.Budding and grafting are vegetative propagation techniques in which a single bud or stem of a desired plant is attached to a root stock plant. In budding, a single bud with its accompanying bark is used as the scion. In grafting, part of a stem or branch is used as the scion. One of the most important keys to successful budding and grafting is properly positioning the scion on the root stock. In order for the scion and root stock to grow together, the thin greenish plant layer just under the bark of the scion and root stock must be aligned so that they touch each other. If they do not touch each other, the bud or graft will fail. Within 10 to 15 days, a successful bud or graft forms a hard whitish tissue where the two cambium layers grow together. Always use sharp cutting or grafting instruments and make clean, even cuts. Options include a budding knife, a sharp kitchen knife, or a single-sided razor blade. Do not allow the cut surfaces of the scion or root stock to dry out: immerse cut scions in a pail of water, wrap them in plastic, or graft them immediately after cutting. Also, remove any leaves from scions after cutting to help keep the scions from losing water. Keep the scions in a cool place during the work. To make a T-bud, cannabis grow systems make a T-shaped cut on the root stock about 8 to 12 inches above the ground . The vertical part of the T should be about 1 inch long and the horizontal part about one-third of the distance around the root stock.
Twist the knife gently to open flaps of bark. Avoid cutting through any buds on the bark of the root stock. On the scion , cut a selected bud beginning about 1 ⁄2 inch below the bud and ending about 3 ⁄4 to 1 inch beyond the bud. Make a horizontal cut about 3 ⁄4 inch above the bud down through the bark and into the wood. Gently remove the shield shaped piece for budding . Slip the budwood down into the T-shaped cut under the two flaps of bark until the horizontal cuts of the bud match up with the horizontal cut of the T. After inserting the budwood into the root stock, wrap the bud and root stock with budding rubber . Budding rubber is available from agricultural supply or hardware stores; if budding rubber is unavailable, use wide rubber bands, green tie tape, or stretchy tape. Leave the bud exposed while wrapping. Do not coat the area with grafting wax or sealant. If the budding is done in the fall, the buds should be healed in about 6 to 8 weeks; in the spring, healing should take about 3 to 4 weeks. After the bud has healed, unwrap it and cut off the remaining shoots or stock about 12 to 14 inches above the bud union. This will be the nurse branch, which helps protect the new bud union. After the budwood has grown a few new leaves, completely remove the nurse branch to about 1 ⁄8 inch above the bud union .The best grafting technique for small-diameter root stocks is whip grafting. Whip grafting should be done in the fall or spring. Although whip grafts use more scion wood than budding does, they allow the grafted plant to develop more rapidly. To make a whip graft , select as a scion hard and mature green wood. First make a long, sloping cut about 1 to 21 ⁄2 inches long on the root stock . Make a matching cut on the scion. Cut a “tongue” on both the scion and root stock by slicing downward into into the wood .
The tongues should allow the scion and root stock to lock together. Fit the scion to the root stock and secure with budding rubber . Apply grafting wax to seal the union. To prevent sunburn, new whip grafts should be protected from the sun until they heal. After the scion has begun to grow, remove any growth from the root stock. If necessary, support new shoots by staking.The best grafting technique for large-diameter trees or branches is bark grafting . To make a bark graft, first cut off the root stock just above a crotch where smaller branches sprout out. If possible, try to retain one branch of the original plant as a nurse branch. The nurse branch will provide the scion nutrition and support from wind .Cut vertical slits 21 ⁄2 to 31 ⁄2 inches long through the bark of the remaining freshly cut root stock stubs down to the wood. These slits should be spaced 3 to 5 inches apart. Cut the scions 5 to 6 inches long with 4 to 6 buds per scion . If scions are cut longer than this, they may dry out before healing. When cutting the scions, make a sloping cut about 3 inches long at the base of the scion. Using a grafting knife or other very sharp knife, lift the bark on one side of the slit. Insert the scion into the slit with the long-cut surface of the scion facing the wood of the root stock and push it down into the slit . Make sure that the scion fits snugly into the slits in the bark and that the cambiums are properly aligned. Secure citrus scions by nailing them in place with thin flathead nails or tying them with strong cord or tree tape. Secure avocado scions with plastic nursery tape. Coat all cut surfaces thoroughly, including the tops of the scions, with grafting wax or pruning paint. To protect the graft from sunburn, paint it with white interior water-based paint, either undiluted or mixed 50/50 with water. Paint the entire area around the graft union, including the scions, waxed areas, and the exposed trunk below the graft union. Inspect the grafts frequently and rewax them if they begin to crack or dry out. Once the scions begin to grow well, remove all but one scion per branch.
Early on, however, prune the scions that will be removed to reduce their vigor but do not prune the scion that will be kept. The one scion you keep will eventually become a main scaffold branch. Any nurse branches should also be removed after all the scions are growing well.During my first summer on the Tanaka Farm in western Washington State, I accompanied an indigenous Mexican picker, Abelino, to see a physician . His knee was injured while picking strawberries two days prior. It was Saturday and the only clinic open was a private urgent care clinic. After the initial physical examination, brief history-taking, and knee X-ray, the physician matter-of-factly suggested my friend do lighter work on the farm, ‘‘something sitting down, maybe at a desk.’’ Abelino responded with a quiet, respectful laugh. On Monday the next week, Abelino asked for lighter work at the farm office. The bilingual receptionist told him in a frustrated tone, ‘‘No, porque no’’ . Later that month, I accompanied Abelino to the busy clinic of a rehabilitation medicine physician for follow-up. This physician asked me to translate that Abelino ‘‘hurt his knee’’ because he had been ‘‘picking incorrectly’’ and did ‘‘not know how to bend over correctly.’’ Notably, in her rush, she had not asked Abelino any details about his work, ebb and flow tables including how he bent over. Years later, Abelino still tells me he has occasional knee pain and that ‘‘los medicos no saben nada’’ . This brief vignette focuses on what physicians and public health practitioners often characterize as risk behaviors—choice of job or poor body posture. The physicians involved in Abelino’s care consider these risk behaviors to be the genesis of his suffering. This focus keeps them inadvertently unaware of the macro-social structures that produce suffering. In this article, I propose the concept of structural vulnerability as an important counterpoint to the common individualistic focus on risk behavior in medicine and public health. This concept trains the gaze onto the social structures that produce and organize suffering into what public health denotes as health disparities. I flesh out the concept of structural vulnerability through a thick description of the complex hierarchy at work on the Tanaka berry farm in Washington State . This hierarchy produces vulnerability to suffering through differential demands, pressures, and bodily practices in work. I avoid the pitfalls of a simplistic, unidirectional understanding of structural violence by illustrating the ways in which macrostructures produce vulnerability on every level of the farm hierarchy. The concept of structural vulnerability directs blame and interventional attention away from the victims of suffering and toward the social structures producing and organizing their suffering.The Tanaka Farm is located in Skagit County, Washington, employing approximately 500 people during the picking season, May through November. During the winter and early spring, the farm employs approximately 80 workers. The farm is well known for strawberries, many from the ‘‘Northwest variety’’ cultivated by the founder of the family farm. The business is vertically integrated, from seed nursery to berry fields to processing plant, with almost all berries produced on the farm sold under larger labels. The farm consists of several thousand acres, much of the land visible west of Interstate-5. Most of the land consists of long rows of strawberry plants, although several fields are dedicated to raspberries, apples, and organic or ‘‘traditional’’ blueberries. At the base of a forested hill on the edge of the farm lies the largest migrant labor camp on the farm, housing approximately 250 workers and their families during the harvest .
Immediately above this camp are five large houses partially hidden by trees with floor-to-ceiling views of the valley. Two other labor camps are partially hidden behind the large, concrete processing plant and the farmheadquarters. The camp closest to the road houses 50 year-round employees and the other, a few hundred yards away, holds almost 100 workers and their families during the harvest. Diagonally across from these two labor camps and the processing plant are the houses of some of the Tanaka family. The one most visible from the main road is a semi-Jeffersonian, one-story, brick house with white pillars behind a white, wooden fence. The Tanaka Farm advertises itself as ‘‘a family business spanning four generations with over 85 years experience in the small fruit industry.’’ On a more subtle level, farm work is produced by a complex segregation, a conjugated oppression . In Bourgois’s analysis of a Central American banana plantation, ethnicity and class together produce an oppression phenomenologically and materially different than that produced by either alone. In contemporary US agriculture, the primary lines of power fall along categories of race, class, and citizenship. The complex of labor on the Tanaka Farm involves several hundred workers occupying distinct positions from owner to receptionist, crop manager to tractor driver, berry checker to berry picker . People on the farm often describe the hierarchy with vertical metaphors, speaking of those ‘‘above’’ or ‘‘below’’ them or of ‘‘overseeing.’’ Responsibilities, anxieties, privileges, and structural vulnerability differ from the top to the bottom of this hierarchy . In congruence with the vertical metaphors utilized by those on the farm, the remainder of this article will move ethnographically from those considered at the top to those considered at the bottom.This farm is owned and run by third-generation Japanese-Americans whose parents’ generation lost half their land during the internment in the 1940s. Their relatives, with hundreds of acres on Bainbridge Island, Washington, were interned suddenly and the government sold their land out from under them. Those in the Skagit Valley had time to entrust their farm to a white family, and thereby avoided the same fate. Today, the third generation of Tanaka brothers makes up the majority of farm executives. The others are Anglo-American professionals brought in from other agricultural companies. The following are abbreviated profiles of key farm executives, focusing on their anxieties. In these profiles, we see that the growers’ worries are focused on farm survival in a bleak landscape of competition with increasing corporate agribusiness, expanding urban boundaries, and economic globalization. These anxieties are founded in the reality of ongoing farm closures throughout the region.