70 THE SUBURBANITE'S HANDBOOK 



Fig. 59 shows another style of orchard planting, where dwarf 

 trees are used as ''fillers" in COMBINATION WITH standards. 

 In this place standard apple trees are planted two rods apart (33 

 feet), which allows 40 standards to the acre, and in ADDITION 480 

 dwarfs on Paradise stock are planted eight feet apart, as shown. In 

 this plan each 33 feet square is supposed to be divided into quarters 

 and three dwarfs planted in each square, omitting the corner next to 

 the standard, leaving them without a dwarf. On this place no roads 

 are repaired as the trees are eight feet apart, which allows carts and 

 sprayers to be freely moved anywhere among the trees. 



Now just here comes the progressive American with iconoclastic 

 tendencies (that is me), and looking over the plan, says: "What is 

 the good of these standard trees, anyhow? Why not dig them out 

 and fill their places with 160 additional dwarfs, making 640 trees to 

 the acre ? ' ' By so doing we will be changing the dwarf system from 

 a "COMBINATION AS FILLERS" into a "DIRECT COMPETI- 

 TION" with the standard plantation. The standards are a nuisance 

 anyway, requiring intolerable labor and cost for pruning, spraying, 

 pest fighting, thinning and harvesting the fruit, not to mention the 

 waste from windfalls, overbearing and the impossibility of complete 

 protection from infectious diseases and insect enemies, as well as the 

 long years of delay in waiting for them to reach a profitable stage 

 of production and the lower grade in size, quality, beauty and 

 market value of the fruit produced, as compared with the dwarf 

 trees. These latter have practically no loss of fruit from windfalls, 

 and all the cultural manipulations, while requiring to be performed 

 with due care and at the proper time, are so much reduced in labor- 

 ousness as really to be classed as a pastime and interesting occupa- 

 tion; but above all the early maturity, large size, high quality, 

 beauty and prolificacy as well as the higher market price of the fruit, 

 raises them far above comparison with the effete standards. 



