68 



THE APPLE 





When the small fruits are 

 used the closest rows are 

 6 ft. 3 in. apart running 

 east and west, 3 ft. 7 in. 

 apart north and south, and 

 4 ft. 2 in. diagonally. 



To facilitate all orchard 

 operations a row should 

 be left out for a street 

 at convenient intervals 

 throughout the orchard. 



Summary 



Fig. 28. 



Quincunx system — first thinning 



Remove peach fillers, as shown by dotted lines 



The square system of 

 planting an orchard is the 

 most wasteful of space, 

 accommodating the small- 

 est number of trees per 

 acre, but by planting with 

 fillers may be thinned first 

 to a quincunx form, and 

 later to squares twice the size of those when first planted, thus allowing a 

 gradual transition from close planting to trees far apart. It is perhaps the 

 easiest of all systems to 

 cultivate. Q> ^ <> ^ <? ^ <? 



The quincunx group \ \ \ 



allows about double the ^ \ % -^ \ _ \ 



number of trees per acre c^ • \ >^ v o »^ N -° 



that the square of the \ s \ \ 



same size accommodates; q \ £\ ^ N q \ q 



but these figures are mis- "\ ^ \ 



leading, for the real dis- \ s \ \ 



tance of the trees is shown 

 by the figures in paren- 

 theses in the table, page 66, 

 which is the size of the 

 squares running diagonally 

 across the field. Compar- 

 ing the number of trees per 

 acre of the quincunx sys- 

 tem with the number of 

 trees according to the hex- 

 agonal system, using this 

 latter figure as the correct 

 distance, it is clearly evident 



\ 



Fig. 29. Quincunx system — second thinning 



Remove apple fillers by taking out alternate rows diago- 

 nally, as shown by dotted lines 



