[Illustration: FIG. 6--PLUMS AS UPRIGHT CORDONS, SET TWO FEET APART]
In a very similar manner apple, pear or plum trees may be trained so as to form an arched arbor way. In this kind of make-up they present a most agreeable novelty. An example of this kind of training is shown in the illustration, page 5. For this purpose cordon trees are usually best; though peach or apricot trees in U-form or double U-form will answer very well. Even apple trees or pears formed as palmettes-Verrier can be carried up over an arched trellis.
Mr. Geo. Bunyard in "The Fruit Garden" tells of carrying apple trees up over the slate roof of an outbuilding, with marked success. The fruit-bearing portion of the trees, lying there on the slate roof beautifully exposed to the sun above, and assisted by the heat absorbed and radiated by the slate, yielded large crops of apples of very superior quality.
There are, of course, some disadvantages in growing dwarf fruit trees, and these should be examined with as much care as the advantages. The more important ones are as follows:
1. _Greater expense._--The trees are somewhat harder to propagate, and therefore cost more. There is no general demand for them in America, so that they are carried by only a few nurseries and are not looked upon as staple goods even with those dealers; and on this account the price is necessarily increased. Thus each tree costs more than a similar tree of the same age and variety propagated in the usual way. But the greatest increase of expense comes from the fact that many more trees are required to plant the same area. There is often an advantage, as already argued, in planting more trees to the acre, but it costs something to gain this advantage. An acre of ground can be planted with thirty-five standard apple trees set thirty-five feet apart each way, and these trees will cost, roughly estimating retail prices at $12 a hundred, $4.20. To plant an acre to dwarf apple trees, setting them six feet apart each way, which is about as thick as these trees should ever be planted, will require 1,210 trees. Estimating the retail price roughly at $15 a hundred this would make the first cost $181.50--a considerably greater initial investment in the orchard.