2/2 Planting Market and other Orchards. 



PLANTING MARKET AND OTHER ORCHARDS. 



By W. C. Flagg, Alton, 111. 



Two or three common practices in orchard-planting I find quite objec- 

 tionable in my experience and observation. 



First is the not uncommon practice of planting promiscuously, without 

 much regard to species or variety, and not much more to order in making 

 the rows straight. When the time comes for picking the Rambo, for in- 

 stance, it must be hunted over an orchard of five or ten acres, and ladders 

 and baskets must be carried to and fro across the orchard to reach the 

 scattered trees. This is the mistake of the thoughtless beginner. 



Secondly, and generally, we find varieties planted in rows ; and, where 

 the number of trees of a variety is small, the practice is not objectionable. 

 But when, as in one of my own orchards, a variety is strung out in a single 

 row of a hundred rods in length, the carrying of fruit, baskets, and ladders 

 becomes a large percentage of the time spent in gathering, and too costly 

 for good economy. 



Thirdly, we find combined with this system of row-planting a later device 

 of ingenious horticulturists, whereby the ground is to be fully occupied. 

 Peach-trees are planted between apple-trees, dwarfs between standards, 

 and the like ; and trees of two or three different species or genera are 

 placed on the same ground, and necessarily subjected to the same treat- 

 ment as regards cultivation. This system, also, I have pretty thoroughly 

 illustrated in my own orchards, and find unsatisfactory. In an orchard of 

 apple-trees planted forty feet apart, and filled in with peach-trees at twenty 

 feet for instance, I find that there occur years when the peach-trees need 

 cultivation, and the apple-trees do not, and conversely. 



In view of the objections to these various practices, I am planting my 

 later orchards in squares, each square, if possible, containing one variety, 

 and being separated from the adjoining variety by a double space. In 

 planting a peacl>orchard of the varieties recommended by Isaac PuUen 

 in the Report of the Commissioner of Agriculture for 1865, I planted a 

 hundred trees of a variety sixteen feet and a half by sixteen feet and a half, 

 with a space of two rods between varieties. Beginning with the earliest 



