March 1, 1019 
354 
The Home Orchard—100 Farm Fruit 
Trees 
Y OUR editorial on page 142S, “100 Fruit Trees 
on Every Farm," is good. Keep after it and 
show the people who are living on farms that they 
cannot afford to he without the fruit which 100 trees 
would supply them. Some farmers claim they can 
better afford to buy fruit from one who makes a 
business of growing it. But what do they do? Buy 
a few bushels of Winter apples in the Fall, and 
when these are gone, the apple season is past for 
them! There is no reason why 
every farm should not he supplied 
with fresh apples the entire season; 
that is, if there is a fairly good cel¬ 
lar. It simply means a little care 
in selection of varieties and in car¬ 
ing for the trees during growth. 
For the past several years classes 
at the Connecticut College have 
been required to plan a home fruit 
acre, and it is surprising how much 
can he done with such a problem, 
although once in a while a student 
will do as many farmers have done 
in their selection of varieties, and 
plant only Baldwin apples, Elberta 
peaches and Bartlett pears. These 
are good as far as they go. but they 
don't go far enough. A suggested 
list of varieties would be as fol¬ 
lows : 
Apples, in order of ripening: Yel¬ 
low Transparent, Red Astraclian, 
Sweet Bough, Golden Sweet, Olden¬ 
burg. Gravenstein, McIntosh, Weal¬ 
thy. Bailey Sweet, Fall Pippin. Pound Sweet, Hub- 
bardstou. King, Wagener, R. I. Greening, Northern 
Spy, Delicious, Sutton, Tolrnan Sweet, Baldwin, 
Peck. Red Canada, Roxbury Russet. 
Pears: Summer Doyenne, Clapp, Bartlett, Bose, 
Seckel. Sheldon, Anjou. 
Peaches: Mayflower, Greensboro, Yellow St. 
John, Mountain Rose, Champion, Slappey, Belle of 
Georgia, Elberta, Crawford, Dale, Oldmixou, 
Reeves. 
Plums: Abundance, Burbank, Wickson, Brad¬ 
shaw. Green Gage, Lombard, York State Prune. 
Quince: Orange, Champion. 
Cherry : Early Richmond. Mont¬ 
morency, Napoleon, Schmidt, Wind¬ 
sor. 
This list is only in the way of 
suggestion. Some persons would 
not care for sweet apples, perhaps, 
but as a general rule some member 
of every family wants sweet apples, 
and the list above contains a suc¬ 
cession of sweet as well as sour 
apples from early Summer to late 
Winter. 
Select a site which is above the 
surrounding land and where air and 
water drainage will be provided for 
naturally. This may be a hilltop, ox- 
part way up on a slope. Any degi-ee 
of slope may be used, but if too 
steep washing is much more likely 
to occur. Any soil which will pro¬ 
duce crops of corn or potatoes will 
grow good fruit. It is true some 
varieties do better on a heavy soil, 
while others develop better on a 
lighter soil, but taking a soil as I 
have mentioned, all types of fruit 
will prove satisfactory. Don’t make 
the mistake of using the poorest 
field on the farm. Select land 
which can be cultivated with a fair 
degree of ease. If the field is in sod, plow it early 
in the Spring and work it up as you would for corn 
or potatoes. Some advocate planting trees only on 
fields which have been in clean cultivation at least 
one season. 
Before you order trees make a plan of the field 
which you are going to use. Measure the land, then 
plot it to scale on paper and indicate the position of 
. each tree. The position and number of each variety 
of fruit should be studied out so that when you are 
ready to plant you will know where each variety 
goes. Don’t buy your trees, simply dig holes and 
plant them, and have the varieties scattered all over 
the orchard. Four rows of trees 40 feet apart and 
seven or eight ti-ees in each row, 40 feet apart, will 
give 2S or 22 permanent trees. At first the trees 
‘The RURAL NEW-YORKER 
permanent trees. Between two rows of trees there 
can be a row with trees 20 feet apart, and a tree set 
between the permanent trees. This will give a total 
of 01 trees if each row contains seven permanent 
trees, or 105 trees, each 20 feet apart, if there are 
eight trees to the row. 
At least 20 of the permanent trees should bo apple- 
four or five cherry and the others pears. The pear 
and cherry trees should be at one end. as they will 
not develop so rapidly as the apples and the trees 
will not have to be thinned out so soon. The peaches 
and plums will remain for 10 or 15 years before 
where it will not be lost. The rows may be num¬ 
bered and the trees in the row numbered. Then 
you can send your man out to pick a bushel of apples 
from tree number six in row two, and you will know 
he will get a certain variety as recorded in the 
hook. S. p - HOLLISTER. 
a i ; 
an 
The apples shown in the picture (Fig. 92) were sent to us bp Louis Lombard, 
Prince William Co., Va. Thru are second-crop fruit. About J/0 trees bloomed 
in September and the apples were gathered Dee. 19. dan. 2t> a pie was made 
from some of them and said to be excellent, fully equal to regular season apples. 
they will crowd the apples, and have to be removed. 
Varieties such as Yellow Transparent, Wealthy, 
Wagener and Oldenburg may be used as fillers, as 
they bear young and the branches do not spread far 
out. 
Don’t purchase your trees from an unknown “tree 
agent” who may have a wonderful line of talk and 
a book of beautiful pictures. Get in communication 
with a reliable nursery firm. They will give you 
just as good prices and better stock than the average 
agent. The cheapest priced tree is often the most 
expensive in the end. The difference of two, five or 
Center Plants Show Proper Growth for Sirring Ploiving. Fig. 93 
10 cents per tree may amount to several dollars on 
the total order, but at the end of 10 years it may be 
your orchard will be satisfactory, while your neigh¬ 
bor, who saved a few cents on each tree, has an 
orchard of “misfit” trees. It pays to get good stock 
of reliable people. 
Nearly all nursery catalogs give full directions fox- 
planting, but a few suggestions may not be amiss. 
Don’t put stable manux-e in the bottom of the hole 
and the tx-ee roots on top of this. Use the manure 
as a mulch after the tree is set. Immediately after 
the trees are set. make a recoi-d of each tx-ee and 
then remove the nursery label. Serious injury often 
occui-s by the wires cutting or girdling the branch 
it is attached to. Have a permanent record of the 
orchard, stating when the ti-ees were set, where they 
will not require all of this space, so fillers /nay be were purchased, price paid. etc. This record should 
used, that is, other trees planted in between the be kept in a well-bound book, written in ink and put 
Sweet Clover as a Soil Builder 
Part I. 
SEFUL PLANT.—White Sweet clover (Meli- 
lotus alba) is. by many farmers, considered as 
undesirable plant and one to he treated as a 
weed under all conditions. Notwitli- 
• standing this frequent and some¬ 
what vehement condemnation the 
fact still remains that it is a won¬ 
derful reclaimer of barren soils and 
a builder of run-down farm land. 
Besides being a soil builder, Sweet 
clover is valuable for pasture and 
hay, but this story will deal with 
the plant from the standpoint of 
land improvement, and from the 
viewpoint of a farmer rather than ’ 
from that of an expert agronomist 
or botanist. In making compari¬ 
sons with other clovers the "little” 
or “common” Red clover is used, as 
it. is widely distributed and familiar 
to the masses of farmers in the corn 
belt. White Sweet clover may well 
be likened to a wild horse lassoed 
from a herd that knows no restraint 
in roaming the boundless prairie— 
it may become a useful adjunct to 
agriculture or it may become an 
“outlaw,” depending somewhat upon 
the ti-eatnxent it receives at the hands of its captoi*. 
Truly, as some farmei-s vow, it may become a “weed” 
or it may become a useful plant. A study of some 
of its characteristics and its life cycle will explain 
the reason for this dual expression. 
A TWO-YEAR CROP.—White Sweet clover is what 
is known as a “biennial plant.” that is, it usually in¬ 
quires two seasons to make a full cycle and ripen 
seed for its reproduction. This being true, the top 
growth the first season is confined to a single central 
stem from which radiate lateral branches, the num¬ 
ber varying with the height of the plant, and which 
may make only a few inches growth, 
or it may stretch up several feet 
during the Summer if the seed was 
sown early and the season favorable 
for its development. The second 
year, however, top growth comes 
from numerous buds which form 
around the crown of the plant in 
late Fall, and there is. therefore, 
much more foliage the second sea¬ 
son than the first. It is the per- 
sistency with which these buds cling 
to life from plant food stored up in 
the roots that makes Sweet clover 
an “outlaw” under certain condi¬ 
tions. 
HARDINESS AND VITALITY.— 
Sweet clover plowed down in Au¬ 
tumn will retain its vitality, no mat¬ 
ter how deep the buds are turned 
under nor how shallow they ai-e left 
in plowing, and Winter freezing 
seems to have but little detrimental 
effect upon them; they are ready to 
spring to life as soon as the first 
warm weather comes in Spring. The 
same general result will obtain if 
the plants ai*e plowed down in early 
Spring before the buds have made 
much growth. They will come up 
through six inches of soil in a short 
time and pi-oceed to “outlaw” at the first opportunity 
in Spring-sown crops. Especially is this true of ci'ops 
that require inter-tillage. Another peculiar char¬ 
acteristic of Sweet clover is that the foliage may be 
cut the first season after seeding without injury to 
the plant, the buds above mentioned being the 
startei-s for the second season. However, if the 
resultant growth from these buds be cut below the 
lateral branches it almost invariably kills the plant. 
The writer has cut this second growth in June for 
as high as 12 inches, and every plant succumbed, 
aking this feature into consideration plowing down 
after cutting for hay should effectually eliminate 
the plant, and no fear of menace to subsequent crops, 
because no seed was ripened on the land and no 
secondary growth formed. 
BLOWING DOWN IN SPRING—Another safe 
way to handle Sweet clover as a plow-down crop is 
hay 
T 
