494 JOUBNAL OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



but in improved trees and bushes and larger yield from each tree or 

 bush of high-class fruit. 



The viiiiue lies in the spacing. Horse-cultivation militates against 

 overcrowding, and there is no more deadly mistake than overcrowding 

 of fruit-bearing plants themselves, unless it be the overcrowding of 

 growth in the individual plants. It is not, the number of plants to the 

 acre merely which determines the profit of an acre of fruit-land, but 

 the health and productiveness of the individual plants on the acre. The 

 maximum to plant is the greatest number of trees and bushes which 

 can be grown — each and all with adequate air-space, rooting-area, and 

 sunlight. The moment any plant is deprived of a generous allowance 

 of these essentials to health and productiveness its vigour is impaired, 

 its crops degenerate in quality, it falls an easy prey to pests, and 

 becomes an unprofitable thing. Economy which leads the fruit-grower 

 into overcrowding is very false economy indeed. When trees are spaced 

 to receive their proper share in soil, air, and sunlight, and have been 

 so shaped by pruning that air and sunlight have free circulation through 

 them, then we have conditions which, if they do not defy insect and 

 fungus pests, at any rate minimize their effect by allowing the spraying- 

 machine to be used with efficiency. In laying out a fruit-farm it must 

 be remembered that sooner or later the spraying-machine will have 

 to be called into action, and where there is overcrowding, spraying 

 effectively is very difficult, if not impossible. 



There are various systems of planting, the best of them probably 

 being that known as the septuple, as it gives to all the plants equi- 

 distance, permits of cultivation in six different directions, and allows 

 of 15 per cent, more plants to the acre than the square system does 

 without overcrowding. Thus, at twelve feet apart on the square system 

 one gets 302 trees to the acre, and on the septuple 347. The system 

 may be applied to the planting of any trees or bushes, from standard 

 trees to currant or gooseberry bushes, and permits of interplanting of 

 tree-fruits with bush-fruits. The practice of interplanting two or more 

 kinds of fruits, so often resorted to, is to be questioned. The processes 

 of cultivation demanded by a given kind of tree or bush on a given 

 area, or its manuring, spraying, and crop-handling, cannot fail to inter- 

 fere with, and strongly influence, plants of an entirely different species 

 interplanted with it on the same ground, and one or both plantations 

 may suffer. On the whole, it seems advisable to devote separate parcels 

 of land to separate cultures in permanent plantations. 



The marking-out of the ground for planting is performed in various 

 ways, but for accuracy — at some little additional cost perhaps in time 

 and labour — no method excels that of using two accurately marked 

 wires — one as a base-line, giving the distances of the rows apart, the 

 other, worked at right -angles to the first, giving the distances apart of 

 plants in the rows. A peg at every mark will fix the exact position of 

 every plant. Accuracy in planting is not only good for the sake of j 

 appearances, but it facilitates efficient cultivation. 



The actual planting of ground that has been carefully pegged out 



