APPLES 



267 



Fig. 1. luterciop of Winter Wheat. Xo crop is placed closer than four feet from the trees. 



has been impaired because proper rota- 

 tion of crops was not practiced and stock 

 was not raised. By avoiding these pit- 

 falls success is inevitable. There have 

 been enough growers who have succeeded 

 in growing good crops and a good orchard 

 on the same land at the same time to 

 demonstrate that it can be done success- 

 fully. To do it the grower must study 

 his soil and climatic conditions and adapt 

 his methods and crops to his conditions. 

 This is much easier to accomplish on a 

 small tract than on a large one. With 

 over seven thousand acres of young orch- 

 ard we have met the problems in part, in 

 the following way. Before explaining let 

 me tell of a few of the local conditions. 



Our land in its native state was cov- 

 ered with fir, tamarack and pine. The 

 land is well drained and varies from a 

 sandy loam to clay loam. The rainfall is 

 about twenty inches. We have an irriga- 

 tion system for bearing orchards but we 

 have not found it necessary to irrigate 

 to get a normal growth on our young 

 trees nor to raise the crops on the ex- 



tensive plan of agriculture. Where we 

 use intensive farming, irrigation is nec- 

 essary. 



We began by planting the trees in such 

 a way that a long life orchard would be 

 the result and at the same time give the 

 maximum amount of land available for 

 crops without obstruction by trees. The 

 planting plan is illustrated below. 



o + o + o + o 



+ O + O + 0"*- + 



The trees are placed 17. .5 feet apart in 

 the row and the rows are 28 feet apart. 

 Every other tree in the row is a filler 

 (marked x in the illustration). When 

 the fillers are taken out the permanent 

 trees are in triangle, two legs of which 

 are about thirty-three feet and the third 

 thirty-five feet. The wide strips (28 

 feet) are in the directions with the slope 

 that gives the best results with irriga- 

 tion furrows. 



