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STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



the moisture in that part of the soil which the plant desired for a feeding 

 ground was soon gone, and the roots were torn and mangled. 



Another serious error was in marking the ground. There was no way 

 to determine accurately how deep the plants should be set. The result 

 was that those which were planted too deep rotted, and those set too shal- 

 low were killed by winds. Now, under all these conditions, you can readily 

 see that, unless there were frequent and copious rains throughout the 

 season, the plants must suffer. Now, we submit that the above method of 

 fitting the ground and planting it is the one adopted by the average 

 grower, and the difficulties could have been easily overcome by adopting 

 other methods. I have said nothing about the hand weeding and extra 

 work performed, and the difficulty on the market of selling fruit. 



Let us now consider the ideal strawberry bed and how to produce it. 

 The land has been manured the same as in the first place. However, if 

 we had a choice of fertilizers (assuming there was a goodly amount 

 of humus in the soil) we would apply a heavy dressing of fine ground 

 bone and unleached wood ashes, as being more conducive to the produc- 

 tion of fruit than making surplus foliage. 



In the spring we should rake off all coarse straw and plow about five 

 or six inches deep. A spading or disc harrow or cultivator will do as well. 

 We now roll and harrow it until as fine as ashes, then plow about ten 

 inches deep, taking care not to go deep enough to bring any subsoil to 

 the surface. This plow is followed by a subsoil plow, going down from 

 ten to twenty inches deeper, breaking up and pulverizing the lower strata 

 so they will hold several times as much water, thus making a complete 

 reservoir in this subsoil for the future use of plants. This subsoiling 

 must be done very early in the spring, to get the benefit of rains to fill the 

 broken ground. If late, I would not subsoil, because the particles would 

 be too far apart to permit capillary action to bring water from the still 

 lower strata. The plow we use for this purpose was made by the John 

 Deere Plow Co. of Moline, Illinois, and is a perfect tool for the purpose. 



^:^,- 



Figure 2. 



We now roll and harrow until all lamp? are mashed and the ground so 

 mellow we could run the arm down twenty or thirty inches. We always 

 firm the ground with the roller, to facilitate capillary action, and leave the 

 surface even and smooth. 



We now lose no time in setting the plants. We never take plants from 

 a fruiting field, nor any bad which has been permitted to* mature fruit, 

 but grow from ideal plants, selected here and there and propagated in 

 special bed for the purpose. We draw a line, merely making a mark, 

 then, with the Perfection j)lant setter, we make a cone. [Figure 2.] A 

 boy follows, taking the plant by the crown, turning it up, giving it a 

 quick shake, and the roots quickly fall over the hand, when he [Figure 3], 

 quickly turns it over the cone, so that the roots fall on each side, without 



