BUDS, BLOOM, AND EARLY BIRD 



common mistake in kitchen gardens, where fruit trees are Feb. 

 often planted round the outside of the vegetable borders, I-I4 

 and it is often made in orchards, where large trees are 

 intercropped with smaller ones, and the latter again with 

 Raspberries and Strawberries. To put things into plain, 

 workaday figures, let me suggest the following : 



No standard trees to be planted nearer to each other than 24 feet 

 „ half-standard „ „ „ „ 12 „ 



" b"sh „ „ „ „ 9 „ 



„ soft fruit bushes „ „ „ „ 4^ „ 



„ Vegetables „ „ „ the trees than 3J „ 



Where fruit trees of different classes are mixed in an 

 orchard, it is an excellent plan to work as follows: 



Standard trees .... 30 feet apart 

 Half-standards or bushes . . 15 „ 

 Soft fruit bushes .... 7^ » 



And until the latter grow out and require all the ground, 

 Vegetables or Strawberries can be grown down the 

 centres of the spaces, so that they would be 3f feet away 

 from the fruit bushes. 



In small gardens, amateurs would find it a good plan 

 to adopt the rule of cropping no nearer to fruit trees, 

 whether on walls, wires, or in open rows, than four feet. 



Staking Fruit Trees, — Amateurs, who are not in the 

 way of providing every kind of accessory required in 

 gardening, are often bothered by what, with the large 

 grower, is a commonplace thing. Thus, when they are 

 told that if they plant standard trees they must provide 

 stakes for them, they are apt to feel troubled, because 

 they do not know what kind of stakes to use, nor where 

 to get them, nor how to deal with them. The amateur 

 sees brooms in the oilman's shop, and rakes in the iron- 

 monger's, but neither the oilman nor the ironmonger 

 81 F 



