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pole neglect, that gives character to very many of our wide-planted, 
unprotected crop-growing, but usually fruitless excuses for orchards. 
In well-protected locations, and when a larger area will be sacredly 
devoted to the orchard, the trees should be set from twenty to twen- 
ty-five or even thirty feet apart. But one hundred apple trees well 
cultivated upon one-half acre, entirely given up to them, will pro- 
duce far more fruit, and satisfaction too, than were they set in such 
bleak isolation as to oceupy an acre or an acre and a half, amid 
starvation, caused by fasting upon the half rations left them by 
other crops. 
WHEN TO PLANT TReKs..—Whether it is best to plant in the fall 
or in the spring, must depend very greatly upon the character of 
the winter that succeeds or precedes the performance. Fall planted 
trees, if living in spring, have the advantage of an undisturbed 
opportunity to become established, and their roots more intimately 
connected with the soil, as the absenting frost gives the ground 
leave to settle around them. A plenteous mulching should always 
accompany fall planting. Ihave planted apple trees with entire 
success while in full leaf in September, but very large trees are 
best transplanted by removing them so late in fall, or early in 
spring, as that a quantity of frozen earth can be taken along undis- 
turbed with the roots. But, taking all seasons as they occur, and 
the general practice§of tree planters as we find them, spring plant- 
ing is usually attended with the most uniform success. Trees dug 
early in spring and carefully heeled in, will thereby be kept from 
getting too much in leaf, and can therefore be planted with safety 
at a later date than otherwise. 
I planted nearly two thousand such trees about the middle of 
May last, many of them quite large ones, they having been dug 
where too numerous in the nursery, and being the cullings of my 
entire spring and fall sales—many of them being often pulled out 
by customers, and re-heeled in, because of too short roots, or some 
other fancied reason for rejection. I set them in well sub-soiled 
lands, by first taking a team and opening deep ditches, in which 
they were planted in every three feet, in rows six to eight feet 
apart, and with a spade throwing back the soil from the place for 
the next tree, to pack about the roots of the one being planted, and 
then turning back to the trees with a horse and plow, the soil first 
removed by the team. In that way two hands set out several 
