The three essentials for beginning such an orchard are:  prepare the land properly, get good stock (healthy and true to name), and plant it well.  I could do no more this year than to plough deep, smooth the surface, and plant as well as I knew how.  Increased fertility must come from future cultivation and top dressing.  The thing most prominent in my plan was to get good trees well placed in the ground before cold weather set in.  At my time of life I could not afford to wait for another autumn, or even until spring.  I had, and still have, the opinion that a fall-planted tree is nearly six months in advance of one planted the following spring.  Of course there can be no above-ground growth during that time, but important things are being done below the surface.  The roots find time to heal their wounds and to send out small searchers after food, which will be ready for energetic work as soon as the sun begins to warm the soil.  The earth settles comfortably about these roots and is moulded to fit them by the autumn rains.  If the stem is well braced by a mound of earth, and if a thick mulch is placed around it, much will be done below ground before deep frosts interrupt the work; and if, in the early spring, the mulch and mound are drawn back, the sun’s influence will set the roots at work earlier by far than a spring tree could be planted.

Other reasons for fall planting are that the weather is more settled, the ground is more manageable, help is more easily secured, and the nurserymen have more time for filling your order.  Any time from October 15 until December 10 will answer in our climate, but early November is the best.  I had decided to plant the trees in this orchard twenty-five feet apart each way.  In the forty acres there would be fifty-two rows, with fifty-two trees in each row,—­or twenty-seven hundred in all.  I also decided to have but four varieties of apples in this orchard, and it was important that they should possess a number of virtues.  They must come into early bearing, for I was too old to wait patiently for slow-growing trees; they must be of kinds most dependable for yearly crops, for I had no respect for off years; and they must be good enough in color, shape, and quality to tempt the most fastidious market.  I studied catalogues and talked with pomologists until my mind was nearly unsettled, and finally decided upon Jonathan, Wealthy, Rome Beauty, and Northwestern Greening,—­all winter apples, and all red but the last.  I was helped in my decision, so far as the Jonathans and Rome Beauties were concerned, by the discovery that more than half of the old orchard was composed of these varieties.

There is little question as to the wisdom of planting trees of kinds known to have done well in your neighborhood.  They are just as likely to do well by you as by your neighbor.  If the fruit be to your liking, you can safely plant, for it is no longer an experiment; some one else has broken that ground for you.