The Bulletin. 



15 



who is looking for cheap pecan trees is very likely to get these "runty" 

 trees, and if he does so he will find them by long odds the most 

 expensive trees he ever purchased in his life. They may cumber his 

 ground for a decade or so, but they will never give him a crop. An 

 intending planter should fear cheap pecan trees as he would a pesti- 

 lence. It takes three and four years under the most favorable nursery 

 conditions to produce a good grafted or budded pecan tree. On ac- 

 count of their enormous taproots pecan trees cannot be dug by 

 machinery and handled in the wholesale way in which peaches and 

 apples are treated in most nurseries. Each tree must be dug sepa- 

 rately and by hand, and especial care must be taken not to injure the 

 taproot. The foregoing explanation will make it plain why budded 

 and grafted pecans cannot be handled at the same price as other 

 nursery stock. 



Fig. 6. — Pecan Tree Sixteen Years 

 Old, Showing Lack of Cultivation. 



The necessarily high price that must be paid for good pecan trees 

 should not deter the intelligent planter. Pecan trees should be set 

 in the orchard double the distance at which other trees should be 

 set. Forty feet apart on the square is the least distance at which 

 pecan trees should be set, and this should be done with the idea of 

 cutting out every other tree when the trees begin to crowd. At this 

 rate there would be 28 trees per acre at the start and 14 trees after 

 the fillers were cut out. It is generally conceded that most planters 

 in the South farm or try to farm too much land. A few acres more 

 or less is neither here nor there to them, so they do not need to crowd 

 their trees. My experience and observation has led me to decide that 



