PLANTING THE TREES 47 



designate as a "semi-permanent." This gives 

 us a uniform planting at a distance of twenty 

 feet and at first glance it might seem that we 

 simply had a solid apple orchard planted with 

 trees twenty feet apart, each way. In practice, 

 however, the filler trees will be the first ones 

 removed, as soon as they begin to interfere 

 with the permanent trees. Just when this will 

 be is difficult to say, but probably in our case 

 when the trees are from twelve to fifteen years 

 old. The first orchard planted in this manner 

 is now eight years old and there is as yet no 

 crowding. 



After the fillers are taken out the tree in the 

 center of the square will still have plenty of 

 room and may remain for several years longer. 

 For that reason we designate it as a "semi- 

 permanent." With the orchard consisting of 

 the permanent and semi-permanent trees, our 

 planting system has been changed from the 

 "square" to a modified "triangle" plan, which 

 in turn will revert to the square plan at the 

 time that the semi-permanent varieties are re- 

 moved. For a time there was quite a little dis- 

 cussion about the relative value of planting 

 trees on the square and triangle systems. The 

 latter affords the planting of a few more trees 

 to the acre, but the increased difficulty of stak^ 

 ing such an orchard, the greater chance of con- 

 fusion in orchard operations and the lack of uni- 



