338 STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



so far as they are not girdled this summer, or now at once, which will help 

 them some next year, but not so much as it would had it been done in June. 

 I think this practice will practically double the profit of our orchards to the 

 present generation, so that we can well afford to set out a new crop for those 

 who are to come after us. At all events, try it, friends, for yourselves, as care- 

 fully and cautiously as you please; but do not leave its benefits and your trees 

 too wholly to your grandchildren. 



Mr. Spaulding's explicit, truthful and candid presentation of his work and 

 plans and purposes in regard to girdling, importing superior foreign varieties, 

 hybridizing, etc., as published in the Prairie Farmer of Jan. 17, 1880, is pro- 

 fusely illustrated, and crowned with the most triumphant and undoubted 

 success on his premises this year, as any one may see who will go there and 

 look upon the trees and fruit with his own eyes as I have done. He has on 

 hand a car load of lime and a car load of salt, and proposes to get a quantity 

 of copperas to keep up the tone and vigor of his apple and pear trees under this 

 wholly unprecedented strain of fruit production ; but as his apples are not only 

 more abundant, but much larger, fairer, higher colored, better flavored and 

 sell more readily than common apples of the same sort, he can very well afford 

 to feed them as he does his workmen on the best the land affords. Why can- 

 not others afford to do the same, and make their trees twice as profitable to 

 them as they ever were before. I should have said, that to demonstrate fully 

 that there is no danger of hurting the tree, by girdling in June, he has girdled 

 some at all widths, taking out all round the tree strips of bark from one quar- 

 ter of an inch to twelve inches wide, and new bark readily formed, and not a 

 single tree among the thousands is injured, only the sap is temporarily checked, 

 compelling the setting and retention of the fruit buds and fruit. — J. B. Tur- 

 ner in Prairie Farmer. 



CLOSE PLANTING- OF ORCHARD TREES. 



"We are satisfied that trees are a protection to each other, hence we practice 

 planting out our apple trees two rods apart, and peaches half way between, 

 each way. The apples are a great protection to the peaches, especially from 

 severe winds when fruit is ripening, and from cold, piercing blasts of winter. 

 One of the finest young apple orchards we ever saw was in Northern Indiana — 

 the trees being only one rod apart, and were just coming into bearing. They 

 had been kept well headed back, but were getting so large when we saw them 

 as to grow their limbs together. We asked the grower what his object was in 

 planting so closely, and he said it was to break the piercing winds and give 

 protection to each other while young. He expected soon to thin them out so 

 as to leave the trees two rods apart. They had already yielded enough fruit to 

 many times overpay for the cost of the trees and work, and besides, he would 

 get a nice lot of firewood. We shall certainly set peach trees hereafter close 

 together, at least, not more than fifteen feet apart, and keep them well headed 

 back, and as trees get old have other orchards thickly planted coming on to 

 take their place, for it is the young peach orchards that yield the finest fruit. — 

 Fruit Recorder. 



