Miscellaneous. 371 



* 



the trees are coming into bloom, and the others at intervals of 10 

 days thereafter, the whole operation costing 17 cents per tree, may 

 be expected to increase the yield of the orchard about one-half, to 

 increase the average size of the fruit by about a fifth, and so to im- 

 prove the quality of the apples that they should be worth from 21/2 

 to 3 times as much as if the orchard had not been sprayed. 



This is certainly a very encouraging report as to the value of 

 arsenate of lead as a remedy against both the codlin moth and the 

 curculio. — Colman's Rural World. 



ARRANGEMENT OF ORCHARD TREES. 



Professor Harvey L. Price, Horticulturist of the Virginia Sta- 

 tion, in bulletin 161 of that Station, says : 



The owner who plants an orchard is confronted in the outset 

 by the important question of planting plans — that is, arrangement 

 and distance of trees. Many specific plans for planting trees have 

 been described from time to time, but those plans falling under the 

 systems known as square, quincunx and septuple or triangular 

 planting, are the most popular. 



Purely square planting does not favor the use of fillers or dou- 

 ble planting, inasmuch as the cutting of permanent distances in 

 half will leave the trees too close together for good results. This 

 is true even where the filler trees are removed early in the life of the 

 orchard. Double planting is desirable because it enables us to 

 make full use of the land while the orchard is young. By convert- 

 ing permanent squares into temporary quincunxes, we secure an 

 ideal plan for double planting. Thus, by planting our filler at the 

 intersection of the diagonals of a forty-foot square, we get five trees 

 in the square with the central tree standing about twenty-eight feet 

 from the permanent ones. This is an almost ideal distance for 

 apple trees for the first ten or fifteen years of their bearing stage. 



This system of planting is not confined to the apple, however, 

 but may be employed with other fruits as well. The practice of 

 mixing different kinds of fruit trees in the same block is never ad- 

 visable; the filler should always be of the same kind of fruit as 

 the permanent trees; it is usually a different and quicker bearing 

 variety. 



In septuple planting, the trees form equilateral triangles. The 



