Field Notes on Apple Culture Author:Liberty Hyde Bailey Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: I do not like the practice of setting peach and other trees between the apple trees, because they are seldom removed when they should be. Most people who begin g... more »rowing small fruits in an orchard continue the practice too long. It has been my experience that it is safer to grow annual crops in the orchard than to grow other fruits. We are obliged to remove the annual crops. If the orchard is to be of considerable size, I should survey it and drive a stake for every tree. If I did not survey it, I should measure around the sides and sight Fig. 1.— THKE-PLACING IMPLEMENT. across. I use an implement, represented in figure 1, for locating the tree in the exact place of the stake. It is held firmly in the ground by the three wooden legs, the notch at a touching the stake. The arm, a b, is then turned back in the position b c, and the hole dug, after -which the arm is turned down and the tree adjusted to the notch. An old spade handle is used as a handle, and if it is inserted so that the implement will balance in the hand, when the arm is turned back, one can push the legs firmly into the ground with a single thrust. This implement (fig. 1) can be made out of light pine, with a length from b to c of two and a half feet and twelve inches wide across the end, c, and it need not weigh above six pounds. CHAPTER III. WHEN TO PLANT. As a rule, fall planting is preferable to spring planting. The particular advantages of fall planting are two : the tree becomes somewhat established in the soil before spring opens ; there is more leisure in the fall. It is well known to nurserymen that cuttings of fruit or ornamental plants if set in the fall become callused on the wounded surfaces, and often send out small roots before freezing weather sets in. The same is true of fruit trees...« less