I36 MINNESOTA STATE HOETICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



ing apple tree, and will need to give them more room. Our present 

 judgments are formed from our experiences with short lived and 

 weak rooted apple trees. 



Unless from necessity of limited space we are forced to crowd 

 our trees, let us be generous with them and give them room to 

 "spread themselves." If to be crowded at all, crowd in the row 

 but leave ample space between rows and govern that space by 

 adapting it to the natural habit of the tree. Varieties in soil as well 

 as varieties in tree should govern distance in the row as well as dis- 

 tance between rows. In a poor soil and with upright growing trees 

 closer planting can be done than where we have a rich soil and 

 plant trees of spreading habit. For the sake of a uniform width be- 

 tween rows in our orchard of over twenty acres we set our trees 

 sixteen and a half feet apart in the row, and set the rows thirty- 

 three feet apart, and in four-fifths of the orchard the rows run 

 northeast and southwest. 



Mr. Philips (Wis.): My first orchard I set east and west, but 

 set the trees thirty-five feet, gave them ample room, and then set a 

 row thicker between, a row of some alternating trees, like the 

 Wealthy and Longfield, that will give you fruit before the other 

 trees, like the Northwestern Greening, come into bearing. In that 

 way your early trees will give you apples while the later ones are 

 coming into bearing, and by and by when your trees get larger 

 you have them fifteen feet apart, and you can take them out; in that 

 way you will have a pretty good orchard. That is the way Mr. 

 Wellhouse does. He sets his late apple trees thirty feet apart; then 

 he sets in a pippin, and it bears itself to death about the time the 

 later trees come into bearing. You can criticise the plan if you 

 want to, but I think it is pretty near right. 



Prof. Hanson: How close together are they planted? 



Mr. Philips: I do not always practice what I preach — about 

 15x35 ft. When I find they are crowding I cut out the poorest; that 

 is the way the world works. 



Mr. Jewett: We recognize the necessity of a windbreak. This 

 plan I propose is practically a windbreak in itself; it makes one 

 tree suffer the penalty of being in the way. For instance, this tree 

 (indicating) has to bear the force of the wind. To save the fruit 

 and for other reasons we have in our orchards set the first tree in 

 each row an evergreen, and in addition to that we have made an 

 alley every twenty rods. We have adopted that twenty rod system 

 for the sake of uniformity in size. Each one of our plats contains 

 a quarter of an acre, and in raising strawberries we know just what 

 the result is. Then in each row we grow the evergreens to form a 

 partial windbreak. There is an aesthetic view about that; the ever- 

 greens look nice. 



