Details of Planting an Orchard 79 



it is obvious that newly broken sod land cannot be as readily 

 fitted for the planting of trees as land that has been plowed 

 a sufficient length of time for the sod to become well rotted. 



LAYING OFF THE LAND 



The trees should always be planted in straight rows or 

 in some other definite and systematic order. This not 

 only makes a nicer looking orchard, and is worth while for 

 this reason alone, but any considerable irregularity in the 

 placing of the trees will cause inconvenience and annoyance 

 in caring for them. 



Laying off the land consists in determining on and mark- 

 ing the exact spot where each tree should stand. There 

 are various systems of arranging the trees in the orchard : 

 the "square" in which the trees are so placed that any four 

 opposing trees in adjacent rows indicate the corners of a 

 square; the "alternate," where the distances between the 

 rows and the trees in the row are the same, but the trees 

 alternate instead of checking in squares, each tree in the 

 row standing opposite the center of the space between two 

 trees in adjacent rows; the "triangular," or "hexagonal" 

 system, as it is sometimes called, where the trees are arranged 

 as in the alternate system but each tree is equidistant from 

 every other tree. In this system the rows are not quite 

 as far apart as are the trees in the row, and thus the sides 

 of a triangle indicated by a tree and the two nearest it in 

 an adjacent row are equal. The term "hexagonal system" 

 is applied because a line joining any six trees surrounding 

 a seventh as a center forms a hexagon. By this system a 

 somewhat larger number of trees can be planted on a given 

 area of land than by any of the others and without placing 



