150 



ENCYCLOPEDIA OF PRACTICAL HORTICULTURE 



the business man. Few of us can afford 

 to be reformers or philanthropists. 



It pays, in theory, to sell good goods 

 rather than poor ones. It pays, ethically, 

 to do right rather than wrong. It pays, 

 to some extent, by being advertised as 

 progressive, or which is generally the 

 case, as a crank. I admit that this is its 

 best feature, commercially. 



It does not pay when the majority of 

 planters, encouraged by the facetious and 

 skeptical attitude of some leading horti- 

 cultural journals, regard it as a dose of 

 nurserymen's buncombe, or species of 

 humbuggery. 



It does not pay when the majority of 

 planters take little or no interest in plant 

 breeding, and even decline permission to 

 examine and mark trees for buds. 



It does not pay whenever the planter 

 who professes faith In pedigreed stock 

 refuses absolutely to pay one cent more 

 for such trees, although that would not 

 compensate for the great added expense 

 of procuring buds from trees entitled to 

 be called "pedigreed." 



It might be made to pay handsomely, 

 both nurseryman and planter, if the two 

 would work in unison in the effort to 

 improve the standard of our fruits. 



There are growers, of course, who 

 would do this, as there are also nursery- 

 men who would seize the opportunity to 

 advertise their stock by using the term 

 "pedigreed," without the shadow of reason 

 for doing so justly. The work, at best, 

 could be but very gradual, although I 

 have already seen a nursery firm adver- 

 tising "pedigreed" apple trees for sale 

 by the million! 



Personally, I believe the work can only 

 be done practically In a small way by 

 Individual orchardists co-operating with 

 some neighboring nurseryman, and thus 

 actually propagating some known and 

 fixed bud variation. 

 ' Leoxaru Co.\tes, 



Morcanhlll. Pal. 



LATI>G OUT THE ORCHARD 

 The Orchard fhart 



Assuming that the decision has been 

 reached as . to the general plan of the 

 orchard, it is better, before active opera- 



tions are begun, to prepare an orchard 

 chart drawn to scale on heavy paper with 

 ink with a point or cross for each tree 

 with the name of the variety along the 

 line of each row, if more than one vari- 

 ety is planted. There are several advan- 

 tages in this method. One is that if 

 mistakes are made they are more easily 

 corrected on paper than on the ground 

 after work is begun; another is, that 

 the whole plan of the orchard can be 

 seen at any time, and will be useful for 

 future reference. Further, if a record 

 or a chart is made the labels can be re- 

 moved from the trees, which is somewhat 

 important because frequently these labels 

 attached to the tree cut the bark, pre- 

 vent the flow of sap, and damage the tree 

 in its future growth. The chart with 

 the place and name of each variety is 

 better than labels on the trees because 

 it is an instrument to which reference 

 can be made at any time in describing 

 the land if it should be offered for sale: 

 in bookkeeping, if the profits of certain 

 trees are to be recorded: in replanting, if 

 some trees die; and in grafting. 



Granville Lowther 



Systems of Plantiiig 



The most important thing to be consid- 

 ered in laying out an orchard is the equal 

 distribution of the trees. There are sev- 

 eral well-defined systems, but only four 

 need to be considered here. These are 

 the square, the rectangular, the quincunx, 

 and the hexagonal systems. The choice 

 of any one of these systems will depend 

 largely upon whether the orchard is in- 

 tended to remain as it is originally 

 started, or whether some of the trees are 

 to be removed when they begin to crowd. 



In the square and rectangular system, 

 the one usually followed in New England 

 the rows run at right angles, leaving 

 each set of four trees in the form of a 

 square or rectangle, depending upon 

 whether the trees are planted the same 

 distance apart each way. The chief ob- 

 jection to this system is that the trees 

 are not equally distributed, there being 

 a large open sjiace in the center of each 

 set of four trees. When fillers are to be 

 planted and thinned out later, this sys- 



