112 AGRICULTURE OF MAINE. 



begin to grow small is this. There may be food enough in the 

 soil, but it becomes dry and there is not moisture enough to 

 force these later berries to a large size. I know of some straw- 

 berry growers that have placed gas pipes all through the ground 

 of their stravvberry beds about a foot below the surface, with 

 small holes bored every foot or so in the pipes, and have attached 

 the city water, thus irrigating their strawberries from below. 

 If you cannot do this it is a good w^ay to make trenches between 

 the rows and let the water run in these trenches. These should 

 be perhaps 8 or lo feet apart. If the foliage is wet and it is 

 damp weather the strawberry will rot, but if you can give them 

 plenty of water from underneath, and sufficient food while the 

 fruit is ripening, there is almost no limit to the size and quality 

 of berries you can produce. For example, a friend of mine who 

 is probably the best strawberry grower in Massachusetts received 

 an order from one of Boston's select clubs for a crate of choice 

 strawberries. He had ten acres and he went over the whole 

 piece to get the crate. I will not be positive as to this state- 

 ment, but I think the average number of berries per quart for 

 that whole crate was 12. That is somewhat different from 40 or 

 50 berries to the quart. This was done by extra care, and by 

 giving the plants what they wanted. The strawberry needs 

 nitrogenous food, also potash and phosphoric acid. 



Now let us take the apple, which is our principal fruit. I 

 was at the Pomological meeting at Auburn the other day, and 

 looked the apples over, and was curious to know how the prizes 

 would be awarded to the three best plates of Baldwins. In two 

 of them the apples were quite large, those on the third plate 

 were of medium size. The large apples were not uniform in 

 size and they were not as well colored as the medium sized ones, 

 but they were a little above the regular size of the Baldwin. As 

 has been said here today, each fruit has its type. The exhibitors 

 did not seem to know what the type of the Baldwin was. It is 

 not the monster that we want to show at our exhibits, but the 

 most perfect specimen of that particular fruit. The Baldwin 

 is not as large as the King, and when we exhibit a Baldwin as 

 large as the King we exhibit something that is overgrown. In 

 the plate wdiich was well colored the apples were all of about the 

 same style and size, the stem of one looked just about the same 

 as the stem of the next. In the other two plates the apples 



