IN OUR ORCHARDS 177 



in after your planting, you will scarcely keep your 

 trees alive without daily watering, and even this will 

 not compensate for the lack of protection to the 

 roots. 



Trimming large limbs from any tree is the be- 

 ginning of death, and it should never be practiced 

 unless absolutely necessary. To avoid this, we want 

 to know when we plant just about how high up we 

 will need the limbs to be removed when the tree is 

 grown. An orchard tree, as a rule, should be headed 

 rather low than rather high. The old-fashioned apple 

 tree was grafted at eight or ten feet, on seedling 

 stock ; as a consequence, most of the trees were high 

 to the first limbs and it took a forty-foot ladder 

 to reach the top. 



Set your apple trees nearly or quite forty feet 

 apart, even forty-five, if planting some of the spread- 

 ing varieties, like Spitzenburg, Northern Spy, and 

 Greening. If you are setting only a few trees for 

 a quiet home, they may stand a little closer. The 

 intent must be not to let the trees, when full grown, 

 interlock, or very much shade each other, for if 

 this occurs the fruit is robbed of its sunshine and 

 light, never becoming richly sweet and always liable 

 to be affected by fungus. A Rhode Island Greening 

 grown in the shade is hardly fit for cider, but grown 

 in the sun is full of gold and sweetness. A Pound 

 Sweet standing in a close orchard is an utterly worth- 

 less apple, but a Pound Sweet grown on an open lawn 

 is delicious. 



