120 3Iississippi Valley Horticultural Society. 



get good crops, can at least increase them more than enougli to pay for the 

 inteUigent use of manures of some sort to a far greater extent than at present. 

 And while some of you may think it a waste of time to talk on this subject, 

 there may be sojue that can gain a few crumbs of comfort from the exper- 

 iences of a poor Yankee whose very bread and butter has depended on a care- 

 ful study of the manure question. At a recent meeting, while discussing 

 this same subject, I said : 



" Well rotted stable manure is usually at hand on most farms, and if applied 

 liberally will give good returns, but from a somewhat careful study of the 

 manure question in the cultivation of large fields of strawberries for market, 

 I think a better crop of fruit can usually be had from the use of commercial 

 manures, having less nitrogen, and the fruit be of better texture and flavor 

 than when stable manure is used or nitrogenous commercial fertilizers. I 

 may not be able to explain it to the satisfaction of the scientific gentlemen 

 here present, but the strawberry is a gross feeder, and whenever well rotted 

 manures or fertilizers containing a large amount of readily available plant 

 food of a nitrogenous character, such as blood and bone, Peruvian guano, or 

 fish scrap are used, it will take them up greedily, and a very rank foliage 

 growth is the result the first year and the plant seems to make its plans for 

 an enormous crop the next season. But somehow it never quite keeps its 

 promises, making a much greater show of foliage than of fruit, and what fruit 

 there is is watery and insipid in flavor and lacking in lirmness. 



"On the other hand, I have found a manure of raw ground bone and wood 

 ashes, or muriate of potash, to encourage a much less rapid plant-growth 

 early the first season, but that it is steady and even the whole season through, 

 and by fall we liave a fine stand of well developed but not rank foliage plants 

 that will always, at fruiting season the next year, give a heavy crop of firmer, 

 brighter colored and better flavored berries than can be grown on the same 

 soil by the aid of manures containing a large percentage of nitrogen. What- 

 ever manure is used it should be applied broadcast after plowing, and thor- 

 oughly harrowed in." 



Now, understand, these experiments were made and results obtained on 

 poor, worn-out New England soil, some of it so reduced in fertility that in 

 a favorable season less than five bushels of rye was the most that could be ob- 

 tained per acre, and it would not be reasonable to expect that the same ma- 

 nure would produce the like results, or at least to such an extent, here at the 

 West on your soils that are not as deficient in plant food. Yet I believe it 

 will pay any of you that are cultivating the strawberry for profit to experi- 

 ment and find out, if possible, what special fertilizers, if any, will improve the 

 fruit in any way so as to increase your profits. 



Potiish, in its various forms, I have tested on light sand, on loamy soil, on 

 heavy clay and on muck bottom lands, and in every case found it has greatly 

 improved the flavor of the strawberry, its ellects, however, being more marked 

 on some varieties than on others. It also has a marked eflcct on the color of 

 the fruit, giving it a much richer, darker color; and while the time of appli- 



