14 DWARF FRUIT TREES 



dred dollars an acre, new methods must be adopted 

 with a view to increasing the returns. This oppor- 

 tunity looms especially large for the first few years 

 after the establishment of the commercial orchard, 

 more particularly the apple orchard. When standard 

 trees are planted thirty-five to the acre, which is now 

 the usual practice, the land is not more than one- 

 fourth occupied for the first five years, and not more 

 than half occupied for the first ten years. Indeed it 

 is full twenty years from the time of planting before 

 the thirty-five apple trees will use the whole acre. And 

 since a good farmer can not afford to let expensive 

 land lie idle he has before him a very pretty problem 

 to determine how the space between the standard 

 trees shall be utilized during the early years of the 

 orchard's growth. 



Several different methods are in vogue for the solu- 

 tion of this problem; but probably the best one is 

 that system which supplies fillers or temporary trees 

 between the standard or permanent ones. In an or- 

 chard of standard apple trees these fillers may very 

 properly be dwarf apple trees; or between standard 

 pears dwarf pears may be planted. If there are thirty- 

 five standard apple trees to an acre, and if a dwarf 

 tree is placed half way between each two standards 

 in every direction, including the diagonal direction, 

 this will make one hundred and five dwarf trees, or 

 one hundred and forty trees in all, instead of the 

 thirty-five trees with which the acre of apple orchard 

 land is more commonly furnished. The dwarf apple 

 trees will be bearing good crops at the end of five years 

 at most; and they can be kept on the land for five 



