CHAPTER XVI 

 INTERCROPPING 



Many orchardists either do not have the financial backing to 

 enable them to wait until their trees bear fruit or do not deem 

 it good business to make their orchard a nonrevenue-returning 

 investment, and therefore resort to intercropping. 



Intercropping may be advantageous in some cases and result 

 unfortunately in other cases. Generally, because of its present 

 commercial value, the catch crop is made of first importance, but 

 this is a mistake. No matter what catch crop is used or what kind 

 of fruit tree is planted as a filler, everything must be considered 

 of secondary importance to that of growing a first-class apple orchard. 

 For this reason it is often not advisable for a fruit-grower to under- 

 take the utilization of the spare land while the orchard is young. 

 However, when intercropping is thoroughly understood and con- 

 scientiously carried out, there seems to be no good reason why it 

 cannot be practiced to advantage in the orchard. 



What crops to use. There are many crops that can be success- 

 fully grown in the orchard as an intercrop. These may be divided 

 into four classes : 



i . Fruit trees. Fruit trees such as apple, peach, plum, pear, and 

 cherry may be used as fillers with the permanent trees. 



It is thought by some orchardists that the best practice is to 

 interplant an apple orchard with apple trees. The permanent 

 trees are usually of a slower-maturing type, such as Northern Spies, 

 Rhode Island, Baldwins, and so on. The fillers used are such 

 varieties as Wealthy, Fameuse, Mcintosh, Red Astrachan, Olden- 

 burg, which come into fruit much earlier than the permanent trees. 

 About the twentieth or twenty-fifth year they should be cut out, so 

 that the permanent trees may not be injured by competition with 

 them. We realize that it is much easier to advise an orchardist 

 to cut down the filler trees than to perform the task. It requires 



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