146 THE CONNECTICUT POMOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



close unless you are short of land. I do not think it pays in 

 the long run to set them less than eighteen feet apart. I believe 

 you will obtain more money in the end than you will by 

 planting them thirteen feet, or fifteen apart. At the end 

 of the fourth year you will obtain just as many baskets from 

 your trees fifteen feet apart as you will from those set eighteen 

 feet, and when it comes to the second crop about as many, and 

 in the third a little less, and so on. In other words, w^e have 

 had trees that have been set twelve years from which we have 

 picked as high as twenty baskets. That is large. If you take 

 an orchard of ten thousand trees, if it will average four baskets 

 of marketable fruit to the tree it is a big yield. Of course, I 

 do not know what my brother would say on this. He has 

 generally done the preaching for the family, but I have had 

 considerable to do with the business, and, as you are well aware, 

 I was a nurseryman up to 1896, and if I had been telling you 

 this little story five years ago I might have said to plant your 

 trees thirteen feet apart. A nurseryman, you will always 

 notice, will tell you any thing in order to sell, trees — every time. 

 I don't suppose there are any nurserymen here to hear me say 

 that, but that does not make any difference. 



A Member : Brother Hoyt is here. 



Mr. Hale : When they get out of the nursery business they 

 will all come back here and tell you the same thing. Now 

 figure it up a little on the basis of trees fifteen feet apart. 

 Now you take the trees in a peach orchard, and they will die 

 out some. A peach tree at best is comparatively short lived, 

 and I should advise everybody, if they think their orchard is 

 not going to last, to plant them thick ; and that is one trouble, 

 you don't know. But I should say not to plant your trees less 

 than fifteen feet apart, and, if possible, make them eighteen feet 

 apart. At twenty feet it will only give you a hundred and 

 sixty trees to the acre, but I have noticed in places in an orchard 

 where there was plenty of sunshine that you got finely colored 

 and developed fruit. I had an orchard that I planted in 1897, 

 setting them fifteen feet apart, and they are all grown in 

 together, and this year I had a lot of fruit from that orchard 

 which was green and small, a lot of fruit which was second 

 grade. Occasionally through the orchard there was a space 

 where one or two trees had died, and I noticed that the trees 



