Two Kanal, One Family Orchard: A Worked Planting Plan

Step One: Turn Kanal Into Square Feet

Every planting plan in Punjab starts with a translation, because deeds speak kanal and marla while spacing speaks feet. Do the conversion in the open, on the plan itself, so anyone can audit it later. One marla in the Punjab revenue standard is 272.25 square feet. One kanal is 20 marla, and 20 times 272.25 is 5,445 square feet.

Two kanal is 40 marla, and 40 times 272.25 is 10,890 square feet. Cross-check it by the second road: two kanal is a quarter of an acre, one acre is 43,560 square feet, and a quarter of 43,560 is 10,890. Two roads, one number. The plot measures about 90 feet by 121 feet on the ground, and 90 times 121 is 10,890 again, so the deed, the conversion, and the tape measure all agree. Write all three on the drawing. Plans that start in agreement tend to end in agreement.

Step Two: Run The Count Before Drawing Anything

Guava at 15 by 15 feet gives each tree 225 square feet. Divide the plot by the tree: 10,890 by 225 is 48.4. A plot holds whole trees, so the plan carries 48, and the point four is not a loss, it is the plan's honesty about edges.

Run this division before you draw a single line, because the count disciplines the drawing. A plan drawn first and counted later always discovers its extra trees in the corners, where they cannot live. I ran the same figures through the trees per acre calculator as a second pair of eyes, and the screen said 48.4, as it should. The notebook and the tool agreeing is not a small thing. It is the whole method.

Step Three: Draw The Grid On The Real Plot

Now the drawing. The plot runs 90 feet across and 121 feet along. Lay the grid with a half spacing inset from the edges, 7.5 feet across and 8 feet along, so no tree stands in the fence line or the gate swing. Across the 90 feet, positions fall at 7.5, 22.5, 37.5, 52.5, 67.5, and 82.5 feet: six columns. Along the 121 feet, positions fall every 15 feet from the 8 foot inset: eight rows.

Six across by eight along is 48 positions, and the grid closes exactly on the count from step two. When a drawing and a division land on the same number by different roads, you may start trusting the plan. Mark the house corner, the gate, and the water point on the same sheet, at their true places, not at the places that would be convenient for the grid. The grid must negotiate with the house. The house does not negotiate with the grid.

Step Four: Place The Things That Are Not Guava

A home orchard is not a fruit factory, and this plot had three more jobs to do. The boundary row of jambul went on the fence line itself, where a tree eats no grid land at all: boundary trees are counted by length, the perimeter divided by their spacing, not by area, so the jambul never touched the guava count. The water point went into the corner by the gate, inside the margin band the inset already leaves, where no grid position stood to be displaced.

The vegetable strip took the south margin, the band between the fence and the first row of guava, wide enough for two beds and a walking line, and it earns its keep in the years before the guava canopy closes. Notice the pattern: everything that is not guava lives in the margins the grid leaves anyway.

The moment a strip cuts into the grid, the count falls, and the plan must say so out loud and recount. This one did not have to. The boundary counting itself, perimeter divided by spacing, gets a full worked treatment in Trees On The Boundary: Timber Rows Instead Of Blocks.

I drew this plan under one condition of my own, settled before I looked at a single number: every tree must earn its shade. The jambul earns it in timber and boundary, the guava in fruit, and no tree on the sheet is decoration. It is the same check I now run on every plan I draw, twice over, once when the grid goes down and once before the order is signed, because a tree that cannot earn its shade on paper will not earn it in the ground either.

On a small plot the margins are not leftover land. They are where the plan lives, and the grid is what the margins protect.

Step Five: Check The Plan Against Published Spacing

The last step is a confession the plan owes its owner. Fifteen feet is a tight guava spacing. The National Horticulture Board's guava guide puts common square system spacing at 5 by 5 metres or 6 by 6 metres, and 15 feet is about 4.6 metres, so this plan stands tighter than the published common spacings, and it knows it.

It works on a house plot for two reasons: the trees are visited daily, so the pruning that tight spacing demands actually happens, and a family eats guava differently from a market grower, forgiving smaller fruit on a tree that stands ten steps from the kitchen.

If your winters are too busy for annual pruning, redraw before you dig: at 18 by 18 feet the same plot holds 33 trees, and at 20 by 20 feet it holds 27, and both counts are more honest for a low labor house than 48 crowded ones. The plan you can maintain beats the plan you can only admire.

Two closing directions, because a mixed plot grows questions faster than fruit. Splitting one piece of land between several fruits, each with its own spacing, is the natural next problem, and it is worked through in Three Fruits, One Acre: Splitting A Mixed Block. And if your own plot's deed speaks marla while your tape speaks feet, keep the marla to square feet converter open beside the drawing from step one onward. The plan on this page began as a translation. Most good plans do.