Tumbledown Farm .9 Acres (give or take an acre or two)

HOW T0 DO THINGS
Orchard Planting

Orchard Planting

The Staking-Board a Great Aid

When the young tree is dug up for the nursery the balance is broken, because so many of the small roots are several and the large roots are cut off and left in the ground. Therefore, a large top induces too much evaporation, and consequently the living protoplasm, which requires so much moisture to sustain it, dies. This accounts for many trees dying after being transplanted. Cut back carefully, so that there may be less branch than root.

With apples and pears it Is advisable to cut back only the wood which is a year old. Peaches may be cut back to a "whip" with no side branches. This is also true with ash and elm trees.

Dig No Holes in Advance

Don't think to expedite matters by digging the holes for the trees before-hand. They dry out and are not fit to receive the tender roots of the trees. Dig the holes large enough to receive the roots without cramping them. Put them in a natural position. Put fine, mellow soil about the roots. Plant the trees a little deeper than they grew in the nursery, to allow for the settling of the soil. Tramp to make the ground firm about them.

Using the Staking Board

Here is an excellent method of staking and planting: Begin by using a small rope or wire, stretching this from the base-line to the corresponding line on the opposite side; then put in small pegs along its entire length, the distance apart at which it is intended to plant the trees. After the whole orchard has been so laid out, take a double staking board having three V-shaped nicks in it. This board may be about four inches long and perhaps four inches wide; any thickness desired. Start at the first peg and place the board so that the stake fits in the center notch; then remove this stake and place it in the notch made at one end of the board, and put another stake in the notch in the opposite end of the board; and continue until the whole orchard is double-staked in this way.

A hole can now be dug between each two stakes. To do the planting the staking-board is again brought into requisition and placed over the hole, so that the two stakes fit into the notches at the end. Then the young tree is held so that its trunk fits into the center notch-just where the single stake stood before the double-staking took place. In either double-staking or planting always work from one end of the row to the other, and always keep the center notch of the board facing away from you.

If one is careful in performing this work it is sure to turn out well.

HOW TO DO THINGS
Staking-Board Orchard

Not Complicated

This sounds like a complicated operation perhaps, but really it is very simple and easy in practice. The picture plainly shows how the board is made and used, and it is hardly necessary to add that each tree is to be held exactly in place in the notch until most of the soil is shoveled into the hole and firmly secured in place.

On windy, exposed fields, incline the newly-set trees slightly toward the northwest; the trees will straighten as they grow.

Do not let tree roots lie around in sun and wind, unprotected; as fast as an armful of trees is dug trom the heeling-in place, wrap the roots in a blanket until all are set. Look out for crown or root gall, or San Jose; better burn infested trees.

Squares or Hexagons?

Trees may be set either in squares or hexagons; the latter system has some advantages-more trees to the acre and absolute uniformity between trees. The one objection to planting tn squares is that it does not cover the ground uniformly with trees; tor instance, A is farther from D, and B from C, than A from B or C, or B from D or A-making a waste of space in the middle of the square. This is sometimes utilized by planting a tree there, such as a peach or some quick-bearing or short-lived tree, tem­porarily to occupy the ground; but this results in crowding in a very few years. Apples should not be closer than thirty-five or forty feet apart; pears, twenty or twenty-five feet; peaches and plums about twenty feet; cherries (sour), sixteen to eighteen feet; cherries (sweet), twenty to twenty-five feet; quinces, twelve feet.