Discussion 07i Strawberry Culture. 41 



cultivates eighty acres of strawberries. I want him to give us his 

 method. If he don't know how, he ought to expose his ignorance. 



The President — That is what I don't like to do. 



Mr. Galusha, of Illinois — We want to know from you, Mr. 

 President, how you cultivate your strawberries so as to derive the 

 most profit from them ? 



The President — I don't think, gentlemen, I cultivate as well as I 

 might, or as well as I intend to do. We (I refer to our firm) have 

 never cultivated as deeply as Mr. Hale has suggested, for various 

 reasons. We intend to deepen our culture. We simply plow our 

 ground in the fall, and then plow it again in the spring, and pul- 

 verize thoroughly and roll. Our soil in Southern Illinois is a 

 brownish clay loam, containing a fair percentage of lime and pot- 

 ash. We plow as deeply as we can, and set our plants, and culti- 

 vate in matted rows. I don't believe our system is as good as the 

 system of hill culture, where circumstances will permit it. But it 

 is very much a question with us whether we shall be able to carry 

 it (hill culture) out with any great success in our section, on account 

 of the crown borer and the common white grub and other destruc- 

 tive strawberry insects. But for these pests, we should adopt, to a 

 great extent, the plan of hill cultivation. But as we do plant, and 

 have planted mostly, we set in rows three and a half feet and some- 

 times four feet apart, setting the plants one and a half to four feet 

 apart, according to the variety. This last spring we set a good deal 

 of ground, but the drought of 1881 had nearly ruined our fields; 

 and as strawberry plants all through the West, and perhaps all 

 through the East also, were a very scarce commodity, we set our 

 plants three and half feet apart each way. We cultivated both 

 ways until they commenced making runners, when we discontinued 

 horse cultivation one way. The season proved a very favorable 

 one. We have never cultivated more successfully and obtained 

 completer rows than we did from that sparse setting, of which over 

 one-half the plants were really not fit to plant. Our cultivation we 

 try to make pretty thorough. We keep a cultivator running as of- 

 ten as once a week, the hoes following the cultivator. We continue 

 cultivation until late in September or October, according to the 

 growth of the weeds, and then very soon we commence mulching. 



