Plans for Peach Orchards. 278 



their stirring Yankee proprietor, J. H. Hale, of Connecticut f 

 He plants 13 x 13 feet, which seems extremely close, even for 

 peach trees in Connecticut. As I walked through them with 

 Mr. Hale, I repeatedly expressed such an idea, but he refuted 

 it as often, gave favorable statements from experience, nd 

 then he would say, 'There are the trees; do they not look 

 thrifty enough ? ' And I could not say but that they did. 

 But he feeds them like a lot of pigs in a pen. He prunes 

 them back to bearing, paying and convenient size. He is 

 not growing peach trees for fuel simply; although they will 

 go into the wood and brush piles whenever their day of 

 usefulness is over, and others be planted in their stead. 

 Streets are laid out both ways through his Georgia orchard 

 of 600 acres, cutting it into regular blocks 1,000x500 feet in 

 size. There are 289 trees per acre, as may be seen in the 

 upper part of Fig. 38. 



"The Delaware and Maryland peach orchards are set wider 

 than those already mentioned. The trees grow to large size, 

 and utilize the 16 to 20 feet space given them. The Michi- 

 gan peach orchards are set somewhat closer, and those of 

 the northern part of the peach belt along the lake are de- 

 cidedly so. I have visited all of these sections and exam- 

 ined the orchards, finding the square or hexagonal styles the 

 most popular. In Texas and California I saw large, thrifty 

 peach trees that needed as much space as any, and planted 

 in the most exact manner, usually in squares or hexagons, at 

 from 18 to 24 feet apart. 



"The pear, cherry, plum and prune (some plums are called 

 prunes, especially in the Pacific states), taking the country 

 over, are all subject to the same conditions and variations 

 of climates and soil as the apple and peach, and, like them, 

 they can properly be planted in any of these styles men- 

 tioned, the distances being changed to suit each. The pear, 

 being an upright grower, as a rule, does not need so mucn 

 room as the apple; 20 feet apart is a common distance to 

 plant standards, and 10 to 12 feet for dwarfs. The Kieffer, 

 Le Conte and Garber bear very early as standards, and may 



